The woman stared at Brodie as he approached. Taylor and Kim followed.
Brodie took hold of her cart and carried it up the stoop. She smiled, nodded, and said in halting German, “Danke, junger Mann.”
Brodie smiled back at the woman as he came down the steps and said to Taylor, “In your best Army Language School Arabic, ask her if she heard anything unusual in the early morning hours of Sunday.”
“Scott, we are not authorized to question civilians.”
“She just told me to ask her any question about the murder. Didn’t you hear her?”
“Scott—”
Kim said something to the woman in Arabic. She seemed surprised that this Asian man spoke her native tongue. They engaged in a brief conversation, and she seemed to loosen up.
Kim said to Brodie and Taylor, “This woman, Amina, says she was shocked to hear about the murder. This is generally a quiet neighborhood. She slept all through the night, as she already told the German police, but they also questioned a young woman who lives above her, and she believes this woman did hear something.”
Brodie asked, “Is this woman home?”
Kim said something to Amina, who responded as she gestured toward the stoop. She climbed the stairs, then pressed the buzzer. After a moment a fuzzy voice came through the speaker. The two spoke over the intercom in Arabic; then Amina said something to Kim, unlocked the front door, and pulled her shopping cart inside. She shut the door behind her.
Kim said, “She asked us to wait here. Fatima is coming down.”
Taylor said something to Kim in Arabic, and he replied.
Brodie said, “Excuse me.”
“I was complimenting David on his Arabic,” said Taylor.
“Why don’t you compliment me on my initiative?”
“I did. In Arabic.”
The door of the apartment building opened and a nice-looking woman of about twenty-five stuck her head out and said in English, “What’s up?”
Brodie looked at the young woman. She had long dark hair, no hijab, and wore jeans and a thick sweater. She had a stud nose piercing and a small tattoo of some kind on the side of her neck. He asked, “Fatima?”
She nodded.
Taylor said, “We were told you may have heard something unusual on the night of the murder.”
She scanned the three people who were obviously not Germans and asked, in good English, “Who are you? I already talked to the police.”
Taylor held up her creds. “I am Maggie Taylor and this is Scott Brodie and David Kim. We are American federal investigators assisting your government.”
“Then shouldn’t you already know what I told them?”
Fatima seemed distrustful of authority, which Brodie generally appreciated, though it was inconvenient when he was the authority. He said, “We’d like to hear it from you directly.”
Fatima thought about that, hesitated, then stepped out of the doorway and sat on the stoop. She took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, shook one out, and lit up. “Okay, I was coming back from the club. The street was quiet. I went upstairs to my apartment.” She gestured with her cigarette at the building behind her. “I’m on the third floor here. I open my window to have a cigarette—the window faces the park—and then I hear this sound, a weird sound, like a kind of pop. It didn’t sound like a gunshot, but then I remembered always hearing about people not thinking guns sound in real life like they do in the movies, so…” She trailed off for a moment. “I thought maybe I was being paranoid, but I looked at my phone to see what time it was, thinking in my head maybe someone will ask me what time I heard this sound. It was three-twenty-five.”
Brodie asked, “Did you see anyone?”
“No. Yesterday I saw where the body had been found. But I can’t see that part of the park from my window. Blocked by trees.”
Kim asked, “Did you see anyone on the street or sidewalk?”
“I didn’t see anyone on the sidewalk, but I did a see a car driving down Jonasstraße. That’s the street on the north side of the park.”
Brodie asked, “What kind of car was it?”
