A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 21
December 30, 2008
The trial was wrapping up, so the curious were here to find out the verdict. Luckily it was less full than the Kürten trial I’d recently covered in Düsseldorf. For that one, people overflowed into the halls outside.
I put the box on my lap and automatically got my sketchbook ready, paging through sketches of the suspected rapist I’d drawn at the beginning of the trial. Round and fat like a ball, he seemed more pathetic than sinister, but I’d tried to find a menacing angle for him. He looked like a self indulgent old shopkeeper. Nothing worth running at the paper. I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand, careful not to smudge charcoal on myself. All the people packed into the courtroom kept it warm and comfortable during the winter, but in summer the heat was oppressive.
I scanned the spectators, looking for Boris and his daughter Trudi. I had met them at the courthouse last Friday, when my life still traveled on familiar tracks. The next day, Boris and I had gone out on a date. He’d given me a small but electrifying kiss after delivering me to my doorstep. Hard to believe that kiss had been only two days ago. It seemed like part of a different lifetime now.
As if he sensed my gaze, Boris turned to look at me. His eyes narrowed, and he shot me a look of such venom that I rocked back in my seat. It was the same furious expression he’d had when the rapist was brought into the courtroom Friday.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 20
December 8, 2008
Waiting for the train, I tapped the box, anxious to know what it contained, but I dared not pull anything out here. What if Rudolf had stuffed expensive jewelry in there? Or cocaine? Or a bizarre sexual instrument?
I took the subway back toward the courthouse at Moabit, staring at my reflection in the window glass while the train careened through darkness.
I climbed endless courthouse steps and pushed open the absurdly tall doors designed to make us feel that law was a grand process and justice about more than the skill of your lawyer. The trial had started. The judge gave me a censorious look from his carved bench, a relic of richer times before the war. Any other day I would have cared, but today I returned his stare without apology.
About one hundred spectators stuffed the courtroom, but I slipped past them and crammed myself onto the press bench, next to Philip Henker from the Berlin Börsen Courier. He nodded a greeting, his jowls drooping like a mastiff’s.