THE ESCAPE
Michael starts the engine and steps on the gas.
Schoffler looks around, puts on his backpack and climbs over the chain-link fence.
Michael races to the house, brakes abruptly, and as soon as the car stops, Yasira jumps out.
She runs around the house. Schoffler is on the other side of the fence, but his jacket has gotten caught in the wire mesh.
When he sees Yasira, he simply runs off. The fabric tears.
“Stop right there!” shouts Yasira.
Schoffler just runs even faster.
Yasira climbs over the fence. Michael gasps around the house.
Stopping in front of the fence, he looks lost. Yasira is already down on the other side and continues the pursuit.
The tall grass hinders her, but Schoffler is also struggling with it.
He has a slight lead, but Yasira manages to match his pace.
Schoffler is surprisingly fast for a stoner.
The power of desperation? Keeping a nearly constant distance, they run toward the forest.
Yasira could scream one more time, but that would probably be useless and would only cost her precious breath.
She will have to stop Schoffler before he can lose her in the forest. In the forest .
. . Maybe Michael is right after all. Could Schoffler be the cameraman?
But why? Why would he do something like that to his girlfriend?
While running, Yasira unlocks her holster and draws the weapon.
Something she hasn’t had to do for quite a while.
She fires into the air. Schoffler flinches.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Schoffler slows down. Then he stops and raises his hands. Yasira catches up with him. Her gun still drawn and pointed at Lena’s boyfriend.
“Lower your backpack,” she says, “nice and slow.”
Schoffler does as he’s told.
“Open it,” Yasira commands.
She can smell the marijuana even before she sees it. Several plastic bags of weed. Yasira sighs. Moron.
“This is significantly more than the legally permitted fifty grams, wouldn’t you agree, young man?”
Did she really just say that? Young man? How old does she think she is?
She instructs Schoffler to pick up the backpack and return to the house.
Michael is still in front of the fence. Like a fat sheep, Yasira thinks, facing an insurmountable obstacle. Her colleague welcomes Schoffler as he climbs back over the fence. At least he already has the handcuffs ready.
They take Schoffler to the car. On the way to the police station in Halberstadt, he repeatedly swears that he has nothing to do with Lena’s disappearance.
That may be true. But they now have to search Schoffler’s house and the forest behind it.
Diligence demands it. Yasira and Michael drop Schoffler off in Halberstadt and ask the local police director to give the appropriate instructions.
Along with the forensics team, they turn Schoffler’s entire house upside down.
And if they were interested in small-time weed dealers in the countryside, they could be very satisfied with all the evidence they secure.
Thanks to AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System and modern scanners, they can compare the prints they find on Schoffler in real time with those taken by forensics in Lena’s room.
The result: Lena was often here, Schoffler was never at her place.
When they’re done with the house, Michael and Yasira join their colleagues from the Harz police station, who are searching the forest behind Schoffler’s house with their dogs.
The officer in charge is shouting, sniffer dogs are barking.
Something terribly grim hangs over the whole large-scale operation.
It continues until it gets dark, but the search remains unsuccessful.
Luckily, thinks Yasira. In the forest you only find bodies . . .
When they return, the first broadcasting vans are already on site. The media have obviously caught wind of the situation. Soon Schoffler will be a minor celebrity. Of course, the police haven’t released his name, but the neighbors in the village were chatty.
“Well, Lena’s boyfriend dug himself into this trap,” says Yasira over dinner at the hotel. “Now he’ll have to shovel himself out of it.”
“Or rather ‘Schoffle,’” says Michael.
Yasira’s phone rings. She looks at the display.
“The boss,” she tells her partner and takes the call.
Gebhardt groans: “The press, the politicians, the public, they’re all demanding updates from us almost by the minute.”
“We don’t have anything solid yet,” Yasira says. “Lena was probably hitchhiking. It may have been one of the perpetrators who picked her up. The crime scene is likely to be a wooded area near Halberstadt. The perpetrators probably came from Mali originally. They probably drank Beck’s beer.”
“Beck’s? How’s that supposed to help us?”
“Not at all.”
“So I’ll say that we’re already pursuing promising leads, but for tactical investigative reasons we can’t provide any more information at this point.”
“Please do.”
“Tomorrow the right wingers will be marching through Berlin,” says Gebhardt. “I assume you’ve heard about the big demonstration that’s been announced. It would be nice if we could present our first successes before then.”
“Yes, that would be nice,” replies Yasira.
Gebhardt says goodbye and hangs up.
After dinner, Yasira sits alone in the hotel bar. Michael has already gone to his room. Searching through the forest has been too much fresh air and too much exercise for him.
Yasira calls Frank Palmer to inform him of the latest developments. It would be awkward if Lena’s father had to learn everything from the media. She also asks him whether he has installed a tracking app on Lena’s cell phone, as Schoffler has claimed.
“I thought about it,” admits Frank Palmer. “After Tanja died, I . . . I sometimes felt afraid that everything was slipping away from me. That I was losing control. I had . . .” He falters.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” says Yasira. “You thought about it but didn’t do it?”
“No. I don’t even know her code.”
After the call, Yasira orders another beer.
Sitting alone in a hotel bar in the evening is a special kind of loneliness.
If you let yourself fully embrace this feeling, you can almost enjoy it.
Almost. The saxophone, Yasira realizes over her second beer, has not disappeared after its heyday in the ’80s, but has found its refuge in hotel bar music.
Just as she decides to go to bed, her cell phone vibrates.
Jenny has sent her a link to a video. Without comment.
Yasira clicks on the video. Before she can see it, she has to endure an advertisement for espresso machines.
Do these companies know what videos their ads appear before?
Probably not. Then she finally sees the idiot who calls himself Bear.
The muscle man with the MP5 claims that Active Homeland-Protection has a hot lead on Snoopy.
As if. That can’t be true, can it? Could this guy really know more than Yasira, even though she has the entire security apparatus of the Federal Republic at her disposal?
The thought of it makes her feel sick. That would be a disaster.
The most frequent comment under the video is “Good hunting!”