by Inger Wolf
"You mean, she's not a compulsive liar?"
"No. That's an ugly label, and it doesn't fit her at all."
"Did you know her parents well, Asger and Mette?"
Joanne hugged herself tightly. "Yeah, because sometimes I babysat both of the kids at their place, and they let me borrow their computer equipment for my schoolwork. They have a color printer and a scanner. And if I was around at dinner time, I ate with them. They were really nice that way."
"What did you think of them?"
"I never really thought that much about them. They were friendly. The dad was a little formal. But he was polite. I liked the mom. Mette. She was pretty cool."
"Cool, what do you mean?"
"Like she was helpful, intelligent. She taught the kids a lot about Alaska and nature. How the native tribes lived, how people survived under tough conditions. I know because Marie talked a lot about it. Mette was really interested in the country around here. I liked that."
"What about her relationship to her children?"
Joanne shrugged. "I never saw anything to criticize her for. They were always well-dressed and had warm clothes. She didn't just buy clothes that looked good, she bought stuff that could stand the cold. Like Marie's light purple coat. Asger was more like he was living in his own world. But it seemed to me he treated the kids good."
"What about their relationship. Did they seem to get along?"
"The parents?"
"Yes."
"I don't know. Sometimes it was like there was something in the air. You know, you're sitting there at the dinner table and they only speak really shortly to each other. Like, one syllable words. One time Marie said they'd argued about money her mom had spent, and she was scared they were going to split up. But it was just that one time."
Angie stuck her notepad and pen back in her pocket, brought out a card, and handed it to the young woman. "If you think of something else, call me. And one last thing. Yesterday, when you picked her up, what kind of mood was she in?"
"Really good. Happier than usual." Joanne frowned. "In fact, I commented on it when she left. I said she was in a really good mood."
"And what did she say?"
"She said she was getting a new pair of boots."
Chapter Five
Homicide was an open-space office environment, each officer with their own territory. A long table marked a conference area. The wall behind the table was covered by a large whiteboard and short shelf with a stack of files, a small American flag, and a green plastic crocodile that no one claimed to know anything about. Angie nodded at her fellow officers and sat down with a cup of coffee. The warm, comfortable room had come to feel like a second home to her.
The interview with Joanne was swirling in her head. Marie's family seemed to be normal. If the killer had taken her, why? Why her? Were they looking for a pedophile the family had walked in on as he was kidnapping her? She hoped not; it didn't feel right, either.
Today, Smith wore a gray suit with a green tie; he stood by the table in front of the whiteboard, scratching his thick salt-and-pepper hair and looking soberly at the many faces as they settled in their chairs. The unusual silence was awkward. Also, he looked at her a bit oddly, as if he had something up his sleeve.
It had been business as usual the day before. Everyone was paired up and had their job to do. One team had been on a case involving a drunk criminal who had died accidentally during an arrest. Another had been investigating a man who had called and turned himself in after shooting his wife. And she had been finishing up a case involving the shooting of a pusher. Killers were identified quickly in practically every case, and their percentage of solved cases was very high. For the most part, Smith's close-knit unit worked well together. Everyone had their strengths, and Angie couldn't imagine a better place in the world to work.
"All right," Smith said. "We're all here, I believe."
Everyone focused on him. Cases such as this were rare in Alaska, and the state was already in an uproar. The phone had been ringing all morning, and she'd heard that Smith had been at his desk, trying his best to reassure the press and several people who had known the family. He began by summarizing what they'd found that morning.
"Angie is leading the investigation," he continued. "I'll get to who will be assisting her in a moment."
He stared at her and she narrowed her eyes and stared back, suspicious now. She'd known him for several years, and she could always see when he was about to pull something on her.
He moved on. "There are a lot of aspects to this case we need to deal with; we're going to have to find the resources. Asger and Mette Vad's life and circle of friends, the murder weapon, the ashes, the dollhouse, their daughter Marie who is missing."
He rubbed his eyes, tried to blink away their weariness. "The latter is our first priority, Marie might still be alive. Several troopers are searching around Anchorage, Matsu Valley, and down towards Seward and the Kenai Peninsula. They've been told to look everywhere. Empty buildings, abandoned houses, anywhere at all she could have been taken, and to talk to any witnesses who could have seen her with someone. If we find her, we'll probably find our killer."
"We're almost sure she was home," Angie added. "But we can't be absolutely sure she was there when the killer broke in."
"And," Smith said, "according to the babysitter Angie spoke with, Marie was wearing a light purple down coat. The techs say it's not on the premises."
"So, she might actually be sleeping over at some girlfriend's house," a young officer said, his voice hopeful.
Smith looked skeptical. "That's unrealistic. By now the whole town knows she's missing; the news has spread fast. The media has been on the story for two hours now, and already some students have printed up posters with her face and stuck them up over half the town. She would have gotten ahold of us somehow if she could or wanted to. She's vanished into thin air."
"Maybe she got scared and ran away when the guy broke in," suggested Danny, a stocky officer in his late 30s. "She might be hiding somewhere."
"But there are four people inside the dollhouse," Angie said. "Four of them were supposed to die. Why isn't she dead too? It doesn't add up, not at all."
The sergeant paced a few moments with his hand in his gray pants pocket. "Exactly. And that brings us to the dollhouse. Somebody built it. The techs have looked at it and they say it's made of small pieces of varnished oak. Looks like professional work. It could be a cabinet maker or some other sort of craftsman. Maybe the killer made it, maybe not. I don't want any information about the dollhouse getting out; the public would be scared out of their wits. But a few of you are going to have to check this out. Maybe this type of dollhouse is sold somewhere. With or without the dolls."
Smith pointed to the next line on the board. "We don't know much about the weapon yet. We might not be able to pin it down. No bullets or casings have been found at the crime scene; the killer knew what he was doing and he covered his tracks. But Danny, maybe you can check reports of stolen weapons. We can only hope it'll show up in some bushes or something."
He knew it was a very long shot. He took a sip of coffee; his cup had "Hero" printed on it. "As most of you have seen, we're already bringing in all the neighbors for questioning. That's going to take most of the day."
"But then there are the ashes," Angie said.
Smith nodded. "That must be in connection with Asger Vad. It could be a co-worker he humiliated or some volcano-obsessed lunatic. There's no doubt it has some sort of significance. We're looking into it. Angie, we'll need to talk to the people he worked with at the university and observatory, and other people who knew him."
"So, who's going to be with Angie?" said Linda, an investigator. She sounded hopeful.
Smith frowned and glanced over at Angie. "It's a little complicated," he said through clenched teeth. "The thing is, the Danish police are sending one of their investigators over, and since we'll be talking to several Danes who knew the family, he'll be assisting us."
Angie gasped. "What? That's lousy."
"Angie!"
"Why do I get stuck with him? Why can't he just hang around, be an observer? I don't have to haul him around in the car with me, do I?"
Smith narrowed his blue eyes. "Look. There's nothing we can do; the decision was made higher up."
"So what? Since when did we start sucking up to them? Surely the decision can be unmade."
"They assured us he's extremely competent. Presumably, he's an experienced detective lieutenant."
"Really?" Angie said. "Like that's a big deal. He's probably some snob Viking asshole who's not going to do us any good at all."
"We're going to make him welcome. That's who we are. As I said, he could be very useful to us because the victims were Danish. He'll be arriving tomorrow around noon, and you can pick him up at the hotel later. I don't want to hear any crap about this."
"Yeah," Linda said. She swiped a lock of her hair behind her ear. "He'll probably be so jet-lagged that he'll just snooze in the car. Or else he'll stare at all the magnificent scenery and babble about whales and bears. If you're lucky, he'll go skiing and you'll never see him again."
Angie scowled. She was used to driving alone, taking care of herself; she didn't like having anyone else in the car. Especially some Danish stranger who knew nothing about their town or criminal justice system.
Smith smiled. "Make sure he's issued a weapon and that you both make the best of the situation."
Angie held back a sigh and mumbled something ugly under her breath. It seldom paid to discuss things with her boss.
"And while you're waiting ..." He held a dramatic pause, "you can watch the autopsies. All the victims were brought in this morning, and Jane Lohan, the forensic pathologist, has already started on them."
He glanced at his watch. "Good thing it's close by."
Chapter Six
From the plane, Trokic looked down on the mountainous landscape below and wondered if some of them were volcanoes. He shuddered at the thought of a sudden eruption, ashes being spewed out into the atmosphere. Ashes with tiny rock particles that would fly into jet engines, melt, and shut the engines down.
The plane was filled up, partly by an entire national hockey team planning to spend the winter in Anchorage, the passenger next to him had explained. Shortly after takeoff from Seattle, the pilot had announced it was snowing in Anchorage, with temperatures in the lower 20s. Half the passengers had applauded this news, which Trokic thought was bizarre. What had they been expecting? And was snow really something to clap for?
He wondered how his American colleagues would receive him. Presumably, they'd told Captain Andersen that a Danish investigator was more than welcome. But really, was he? Would he enjoy having a foreign detective following him around? He hoped they'd be able to work together without any problems. Otherwise, the next several days were going to be awfully long.
He had slept quite a bit on the way over, but now it was time to do some reading in Asger Vad's books, research articles, and interviews, which the captain had been kind enough to loan him. He tried to ignore the stewardesses banging around in the galley. Could the key to the family's murder lay in any of this? Was Asger the intended victim? Had he stepped on someone's toes? The volcanologist had written three books, all in English. One, "On the Edge of Hell," described the inner processes of a volcano. Dry reading about cracks in the earth, continental plates, magma, lava, and ashes. The various types of volcano were covered, and the book was full of illustrations, graphs, and boring black-and-white photos. Trokic emptied another glass of red wine from Alaska Airlines' dubious selection, skimmed through the book, and stuck it back in his carry-on. The second book, "The World's Volcanoes," was a reference work about the largest and most significant volcanoes, active and inactive. Hekla on Iceland, Etna in Italy, Colima in Mexico, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, and a number of others Trokic had never heard of. Apparently, Asger had been to all of them; he'd written a short travel story to accompany each volcano. The writing was easily understandable and enthusiastic, and at least the photos were in color.
The last book was dedicated to Mount Redoubt, an active stratovolcano southwest of Anchorage that Trokic had never heard of. Asger apparently had a thorough and unique knowledge of it. The book had several photos of the snowy, slightly asymmetrical, cone-shaped volcano. Its latest activity had taken place in 2009, the book said. Not all that long ago. It had erupted several times during a two-week period before finally calming down.
Three hundred miles later, Trokic had reached the interviews. Captain Andersen had known Asger Vad well, and he'd had only good things to say about him. And because they were good friends, he had cut out newspaper articles about the volcanologist. One feature article in a Danish daily, Jyllands Posten, dealt with his leaving Denmark and devoting his life to a rare branch of science. Asger Vad was both witty and thoughtful, it seemed. He liked Alaska, one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and he and his family had adjusted well to American life. Americans were open and warmhearted, though there were also people who at times were limited in their world-view, and also a bit too religious, in his opinion. But for the most part he enjoyed his life there; he was an advisor for students writing their theses, he wrote books and studied Alaska's volcanoes, and along with his colleagues he kept an eye out for volcanic activity.
Simply put, he came off as a serious and likable man with respect for nature, and none of the reading material gave the slightest hint as to why he was lying in the town's morgue, his throat stuffed with ashes, the victim of a mass murderer.
Chapter Seven
The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory was located on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, not far from the police station. It was relatively new and tastefully decorated with white walls and a large glass mosaic gracing the lobby. It looked nice. That is until you opened the heavy doors and walked into the heart of the laboratory, where reality set in. The autopsy facilities were divided into what Angie thought of as the good and the bad section. The latter was closed off with a separate ventilation system; it was exclusively for seriously decomposed corpses that smelled horrible and whose flies and maggots needed to be held in check. The former handled new corpses without such problems. Due to Alaska's short summers, most autopsies were fortunately performed in the good section. The laboratory often received bones from distant parts of Alaska, where people stumbled onto the remains of humans and wanted them identified. Most were from old gravesites, but once in a while, a person showed up who had been buried underneath the snow and had gone missing for several years.
Things were hectic at the laboratory. Office girls were busy at their computers when Angie signed in. Some mumbled a hello as she walked past, adding that people were apparently dying like flies at the moment. Angie walked into the autopsy room.
The pathologist, Jane Lohan, was leaning over a corpse on the steel table in front of her. She straightened up when she saw Angie. "Have you found Marie Vad?"
Angie shook her head. "No. But we're doing absolutely everything we can. The whole town is on the lookout, we're turning over every rock."
"I can't bear to think about it," Jane said. "It hasn't been the best of mornings here. You're just in time for the grand finale. The main character, so to speak."
The room was spacious enough to perform four autopsies simultaneously. For a moment, Angie had imagined the entire Vad family would be lying there, each on a separate table. But Lohan had apparently decided to take them one at a time.
Angie dried her sweaty palms on her black pants and stared down at the body of Asger Vad. There was surprisingly little blood, and had it not been for the small entry wound on his forehead, he looked as if he might have died of natural causes. Someone must really have been angry, she thought.
Jane carefully cut the victim's clothes off and put them in a numbered bag, to be sent to the lab for analysis. She was in her late forties, with a small, angular face, clear green eyes, and dark
brown hair in a ponytail. Her face seemed frozen in a worried expression, and Angie was always surprised when her face cleared up and she suddenly smiled.
She raised an eyebrow in Angie's direction. "I've been busy all morning and I've just about had it. I've seen a lot in my time, but this…I think this beats everything. I'm sorry I didn't have time to talk to you earlier; it would've been good for us both. But it was important to get them in here as quickly as possible and get started."
"I was more or less in shock myself," Angie confessed. "The crime scene. It spoke for itself, way too much."
The pathologist nodded. She lived within walking distance of Angie, and occasionally they had a cup of coffee together. Even though they seldom talked about anything other than work, Angie considered her a friend, one who knew her deepest secret and had once saved her from going off the deep end and losing her job. A friend she could trust, whose abilities she had the greatest respect for.
"Anyway, it's time for the last man," Jane said. "Like I said, the main character, the one it's possibly all about. And everything he was supposed to see. But we'll get to that later."
That didn't sound good to Angie. "What do you mean?"
"Let's look at him first, then I'll explain."
Angie studied her; she was hiding something, and that made Angie nervous. But Jane liked to work systematically. She would talk about it when she was good and ready.
"He was dressed in these clothes postmortem, no doubt about that. The same goes for the other two."
"Yeah. That had to have been difficult. Some of the clothes might not have fit them all that well."
"It is difficult to put clothes on a lifeless person," Jane acknowledged.
She worked slowly and in silence. Took samples, weighed organs, measured distances. Once in a while, she mumbled into a Dictaphone and wrote a note. Angie made an effort to endure the sound of the saw. The sight of blood and inner organs didn't bother her, nor did the smell, but the sounds were hard to handle; despite spending a lot of time at the lab, she'd never gotten used to them.
