Grave Intent by Alexander Hartung Page A

detective. Name of Tommen or something like that.”
    “Postmortem again?”
    “Yep. We only noticed it here in autopsy on account of no blood in his mouth.”
    “Self-defense wounds?”
    “Nothing I can see.” She took a glass lid and covered the sample. She’d wipe her bloody fingerprints off the glass later.
    “Signs of being tied up?”
    “Nope.”
    “Was he killed while sleeping?”
    “Possibly. The perp might have surprised him—that or drugged or poisoned him. Even if there are no signs of a poisoning, I’ll run the whole gamut.”
    “Signs of being dragged?”
    “No.”
    “So the murderer packed up Moritz Quast like he did before and got him to the cemetery. Are there pressure marks?”
    “Huh?”
    “If Moritz Quast was carried in, say, a crate or box, there might be pressure marks proving that.”
    “You watch too much TV,” Zoe said. “That’s how it works on bad crime shows. Reality is different.”
    “How about any residue from packing materials?”
    “I can tell you more about that once we’ve analyzed the clothing under a microscope. That will take a couple days.” Zoe leaned back over the corpse. “A little more brain and the stomach contents, then I’ll get started on my jigsaw puzzle,” she said.
    “Puzzle?”
    “You do not want to know.”
    “Oh,” Jan said. He always did upset easily. “Till next time,” he said and hung up.
    Zoe pushed the big magnifying glass into position over the head and, using her scalpel, excised a portion of brain. The back of the head was smashed something awful. It would take hours for her to piece it all back together and make an impression of it. But then she’d know if a hammer had been used as the murder weapon again. Humming happily, she placed the sample in the petri dish and grabbed a large container for the stomach contents.

    Moritz Quast’s house had been cordoned off. A few photographers and rubberneckers stood behind the police tape. The media had gotten wind that the cemetery was where the body had been found. There was little for them to see here at the house.
    Chandu was holding a cup of coffee, waiting for Jan at the backyard gate.
    “How’s the crime scene?” Jan asked.
    “You’re not going to like it.”
    “I was afraid of that.”
    “No one knows how the murderer got inside,” Chandu said. “There are no signs of a break-in, and the surveillance car had an eye on the front door the whole time. He likely had a key to the back door.”
    “Where from? Moritz Quast and I counted all the keys last night. None were missing.”
    “That’s a cheap lock. The key’s easy to copy. Making an impression would work.”
    “Damn it,” Jan said. It was starting to get to him, how screwed up this was. “So he knew the murderer?”
    “That or he was able to come up with some other way. But days ago. As a handyman or gardener, maybe.”
    “Clues?”
    “They found fingerprints and DNA everywhere. The evaluation is still ongoing, but we could very well strike out, just like with the first murder.”
    “Where was Quast murdered?”
    “That’s our next problem,” said Chandu. “There’s no evidence that he was killed in the house.”
    “What?”
    “The crime-scene guys couldn’t believe it themselves, so they went through the place twice. No murder weapon. No blood. A few dried semen stains on the living-room sofa. Since Moritz Quast subscribed to a porn channel, they probably came from him.”
    “So he was still alive when Fabian and David went in?”
    “Seems so. What are those two saying?”
    “Fabian didn’t see anything. David took a hit on the head, he’s no help. I’ll just have to wait till he’s recovered.”
    “Maybe Quast was tied up?”
    “Zoe says he wasn’t.”
    “Drugs? Narcotic to knock him out?”
    “They’re still running tests. We’ll have to wait it out till this evening.”
    “Maybe the killer was holding a gun to Quast’s head?”
    “While taking out Fabian and David at the same time?