Triple Cross

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 of Electric.

The Berlin victims had all died as couples—illicit lovers, in fact, some straight and some gay, all of whom had had their trysts 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 of Electric. 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.

Her rationale was simple and smart. Inspector Firsching figured the killer had to have access to drugs normally used to tranquilize large animals. She and Tull went to the Berlin Zoo and talked to veterinarians and handlers. They learned that tranquilizer darts often contain benzodiazepines, a class of drugs that depress the nervous system.

“Administered at proper doses,” Tull wrote, “these drugs will not kill humans or animals. But increase the doses or combine them with alcohol or opiates, and the risk of death rises dramatically. In toxicology screens that Inspector Firsching ordered, the German national crime lab found high doses of the benzodiazepine midazolam mixed with higher doses of the opiate fentanyl. The lethal cocktail caused almost immediate cardiac and respiratory failure.”

Firsching and Tull believed the killer might be someone who had access to the drugs—a zoo worker, perhaps. That accusation caused an uproar, and the zoo administrators denied that any of their drugs had gone missing.

Two weeks passed with no additional murders. Then a heterosexual couple was found dead in an empty farmhouse in a rural area south of Berlin. The victims were both naked with plastic bags over their heads and cords around their necks. German investigators at first announced that the divorced housewife and her married lover had died of hypoxia during a bout of mutual “autoerotic asphyxiation.”

Even though there was no sign of struggle and the deaths did not involve tranquilizer darts, Inspector Firsching and Tull did not believe these two deaths were accidental.

“The different method of death was less important,” Tull wrote. “It was the time frame and motive that mattered. The noon hour. The illicit trysts.”

Firsching and Tull turned out to be correct, of course. But was this one of those illogical leaps that Suzanne Liu had described to me?

I made a note of it and glanced at the clock—it was close to midnight. I yawned and set the book down, figuring I’d continue reading in the morning. But as I shut off the light and started down the stairs, I admitted that I would get little, if anything, done until after Jannie’s big race was over.

I climbed into bed, reached out to shut off the light, and saw I’d received a text from Bree. It kept me smiling long after the room went dark.

I love you, baby. Wish you were here in my nice five-star hotel bed!

CHAPTER 23

Manhattan

BREE SLEPT IN A little that Saturday morning. Around eight, she went out for a run in Central Park, where she followed much the same route she’d taken the afternoon before with Detective Salazar.