by Inger Wolf
Chapter Sixty-Two
The door to the Institute wasn't locked, but the building was quiet. Lisa and Jacob walked around aimlessly until she found a male student engrossed in a book. They startled him, and he slammed the book shut.
"We're looking for Isa Nielsen, do you happen to know if she's in today?" Jacob said.
"You're too late. She just stopped by to pick up her things. Not more than half an hour ago. She doesn't work here anymore."
"Why not?"
"She quit," he said. "New challenges. It really surprised us, the ones who've had her for several years. Too damn bad. She was really popular."
"Did she say where she was going?" Lisa said.
"Right now? No."
"Did she say anything about a new job? Where it might be?"
"No," the student said, "she didn't know yet. Only that it wasn't going to be in Denmark. There's not so much happening in sociology here."
"Is there a photo of her somewhere around?"
"You don't even know what she looks like?"
"No."
He sighed and stood up. "Wait here; I'll find one for you."
A moment later, they were holding a photocopy.
"This is the photo on the back flap of the textbook she wrote. I hope it's okay for you."
"It's perfect, thank you."
Lisa frowned as she studied the blonde woman in the photo. Her smile was friendly but reserved. Could they be wrong? Was she really this horrible person Palle had described in his diaries? A perverted creature who enjoyed humiliating him sexually. Who in several ways had said too much because she wanted him to be a spectator and had misjudged him, thought he was harmless? And could she really have killed these people? The semen on Anna Kiehl's body, Palle's role. How exactly did it all fit together?
They headed back to the station. She absolutely had to get hold of Trokic so they could fill each other in on developments and discuss what to do. Everything seemed to be moving fast. She sat up straight; she was worried about him, he'd taken quite a blow to the head, and she doubted he was following the doctor's orders about resting and how to treat the wound. Where the hell was he? Jacob sat beside her, reading what was written about Isa Nielsen on the flap underneath her photo.
"We could put out an APB," Jacob said.
"Let's hear what Trokic has to say."
She punched his number in for the fifth time that day. It rang. Finally.
Chapter Sixty-Three
He parked the car at one of the small rest areas leading down to the shore. The wind had picked up, millions of leaves were rustling, and he clenched his teeth when the cold air ripped through the thin bandage and stung his infected wound. He felt his cheeks and scalp reddening, a sign of fever coming on.
The area was deserted except for a small blue Toyota that backed in, turned around, and headed down the gravel road. Was it her car? He glanced around but saw nothing to be nervous about, so he followed the narrow steps snaking down the steep slope to the bay. Clouds were gathering, a drizzle hampered visibility. He could barely make out the painted jollies far below, their hulls green with algae. Somewhere around a hundred of them lined this stretch of beach. Isa had fished here as a child, she'd said. He was on the lookout for a blue fiberglass boat, white inside, as she had described.
His head was pounding, and he felt nauseous from pain, but he was too close to clearing up this business about the hand to stop now.
The tide had almost reached the jollies when he stepped onto the shore. The air stank of rotten seaweed washed up by whitecaps. He started when a figure in a dark green rain jacket appeared from behind a bluff, but it was just a woman walking her dog.
"Quite the weather," she said as she approached. His appearance frightened her, however, when she passed by next to him. She pulled her boxer closer in. Trokic jogged as he scanned the jollies. Where was she?
He hopped up on the meter-high stone dike and walked into the bushes to answer the call of nature when he noticed more jollies hidden behind bushes and trees. Maybe this was where she was talking about. It all felt hopeless, and soon the fading twilight would make it impossible to tell one boat from the next. He took care of his business, and as he turned to head back north, the form of something blue by a wild rose bush caught his eye.
He struggled to drag the boat out, almost fainting at one point. Anyone strolling by would definitely suspect he was up to no good, standing in the rain with a thin bandage around his head, pulling on a blue jolly. Finally, the boat was free of the thorny bushes, though he'd cut his hands. The depression where the boat had rested looked empty.
He turned it over. It was a simple, primitive fiberglass boat with two seats. The filthy bottom smelled faintly rotten; apparently, it hadn't been used for many years. And that was it. An old boat. Disappointed, he tapped out a cigarette and mulled over what he had. Why hadn't she shown up? He couldn't know if this was the right jolly, or even if there was any point to all this. He decided to pull it back in, go home, get some sleep, and then get briefed by his colleagues.
It was nearly dark when the boat was finally back into the bushes. He almost tripped on a small mound. A corner of black plastic was sticking up right beside his shoe. He tugged on it cautiously, but it didn't budge. Then he realized it was a sack. Of course he couldn't pull it up, he was standing on it! He stepped aside and pulled again. This time the ground loosened, and the black plastic sack appeared. Trokic's mouth was dry as he glanced around the windblown edge of the forest and opened it.
The rotten stench knocked his head back and nearly caused him to vomit. He pulled open the edges of the sack to let some of the stench rise and drift away with the sea breeze.
The smell made him think the sack contained decomposing human remains, but if anything, his disgust deepened as he exposed what was inside. He felt drained of strength.
He fished around in his pockets and found a pen and a small miniature flashlight to help take stock of what he'd found. What was going on here? His brain raced to make sense of it all.
His phone rang. Lisa. It must be important, the way she kept calling.
"Yes?"
"Where are you?"
"At Eagle's Nest."
"What the hell are you doing there?"
"I got a tip about the hand."
The total silence that followed made him think the phone had gone dead. When she finally spoke, she sounded assertive, insistent. Not like Lisa at all.
"Who gave you the tip?"
He shone the light on his find. The fleece blanket in the sack was soaked in what once had been fresh blood but now was simply a stinking mess. Maybe Christoffer Holm had been wrapped in it when he was moved to the pond, he thought. He also noticed a small ax inside.
"The woman from the running group," he said. "The sociologist. Isa Nielsen."
A vague thought began forming in his head. He heard the faint crack of a branch in the forest nearby. Quickly, he closed the sack and peered around, but the forest was silent again.
"And you're alone?"
"Yes."
"Get out of there, now."
"What?"
"Right now."
Another voice joined in from behind. "You wouldn't think there's so much inside them."
He froze. The hand. The sand. The phone slipped out of his fingers and rolled down the slope behind him. He turned to the woman.
Chapter Sixty-Four
It took Lisa a few moments to realize what was happening. She was certain that, for whatever reason, the woman was after Trokic. Why else lure him there? She stared out from behind the wheel at the pouring rain. "Oh my God!" she yelled. "She's a psycho, what's she planning on doing?"
She switched lanes and hit the blue lights and siren.
"Did you see the writing on the hand?" she said, her gun pointed directly at his heart. Her voice was calm, though with a hint of childishness, as if she were demanding attention. He thought back to the reconstruction of events. She was the one who had moved Chr
istoffer in this blanket and dumped his body in the pond.
Isa Nielsen was wearing a dark rain suit, and her blonde hair was only slightly visible from under her hat. Dark, as camouflage? Or rainwear, easily washed off? He was close enough to her to see the lunacy in her eyes. Why hadn't he noticed it before?
Trokic nodded and recalled the shrunken hand and all the speculation it had spawned. For some reason, she wanted it. It was still in the car.
She smiled. "Good." She stepped forward and opened his jacket, then she pulled out his gun. His heart sank as she glanced at it and stuck it in her jacket pocket.
Now he knew where the hand came from.
"Where's your father, Isa?"
"Underneath us, in a hole under the bush. I dug for six months before he was to die."
She paused a moment. A very chilly moment. "He was the first."
He already knew that. "Why?"
"It's the same old story. A man with a drunk for a wife, she can't satisfy his needs in bed. So, he started in on me."
There was no self-pity in her voice. Just the bare facts. "The hand, that was a good one, wasn't it?"
She'd felt so confident, he could see that now. Overconfident, after leading the police around by the nose for so long. The lack of physical evidence, their search for a motive, the investigation leading nowhere had bored her. Her cryptic, ambiguous clues had been planted solely for her own amusement. And in her eyes, despite giving them all these extra leads, they were incompetent. He sensed that not only did she disapprove of them, but she gave herself credit for the progress they had made. A conclusive sign of her superiority.
He answered her question with one of his own. "What happened to Christoffer, Isa?"
"I did have feelings for him, of course. I didn't mean for it to end the way it did…at least not with him. He was a good person, it was just…an accident. He was my ticket out of here. His research and the profits from it." She sighed. "Surely, you don't think I'd want to stay in this…in this hole for decades. We had dreams, he and I…we were going to live…get away from this small-minded mentality, all the petty Danes…well, now I'll just have to do it by myself."
"So, then he met Anna?"
She grimaced, then a smile spread across her thin lips. "At first, he didn't want to tell me…said it had nothing to do with me, he just wanted some time alone. I found her panties under the bed. Men are so very, very primitive."
Her voice turned thoughtful. "I called him when he was in Montréal and insisted on picking him up in Copenhagen, where I had a meeting. I told him it was important. At first, he refused. He'd rather take another flight than drive home with me, can you believe it? After we were together for several months?" She shook her head. "When I told him I was thinking about talking to Søren Mikkelsen about his research, he changed his mind. On the way home from Copenhagen, I tried to convince him he was making a grave mistake. We argued. He was very angry, and it turned violent. I couldn't concentrate on driving, and we…we had an accident. He wasn't wearing a safety belt."
"The splinters of glass—"
"Precisely. His face was…smashed up. He would have blamed me. And that's when I realized I'd lost."
Trokic was disgusted. "Really, you had little choice, you practically had to kill him with an ax."
"Shut up," she shrieked. She lifted her gun and aimed at him again, then she took her hood off to reveal her long blonde hair. "I knew where he usually kept his reports. After he was dead, I went to his apartment to get them. No reason to let money go to waste, is there? But the report with the new research results was gone."
He remembered what Lisa had told him. "You found it at his sister's?"
"It was obvious. He was close to his sister; he confided in her."
She tossed her head back slightly. Her laughter sounded like small, delicate bubbles. "Procticon has offered me one point two million for the report."
"That's not much when you think about what—"
"Pounds, my dear detective lieutenant. All Christoffer's noble intentions and ambitions about medical criticism—complete hogwash. So what if weak people become addicted to that type of pill…it's their choice, isn't it? If I don't profit from it, someone else will. It's only a matter of time."
"But Anna. There was no reason to get rid of her too, was there? She was pregnant, Isa. Did you know that? And she had a young son."
She seemed to reflect on that for a moment, then she feigned guilt. "Yes, it was bad of me, wasn't it? But, you have to understand, she was suspicious. Out of the blue one day, she called me at my office and said she had a copy of all his research reports. Just as a precaution, she said. She claimed to know about my contact with Procticon. I thought she might have been bluffing, but I couldn't take that chance. I called her from a telephone booth and asked her to meet me somewhere, said I could pick her up. By then, I knew what I had to do. She said she was on her way out the door for a run, so I told her I'd meet her there in the forest. You know the rest. She cried when she realized what was going to happen. She kneeled down and begged, pleaded with me. When I finished up, I grabbed her key and searched her apartment for the copy she said she had. I looked everywhere, but it wasn't there. She'd only been threatening me. A stupid thing to do."
Trokic remembered how Anna Kiehl had been found in the forest. Near the man she'd loved. Isa must have savored the irony of them ending up together, two treacherous conspirators—to her, anyway. Illustrated physically by the sprig of hemlock. The blood-like red splotches on its stem, as well as its use in executions in ancient Greece, only added to the symbolism for her.
"And Palle? Did he get in your way, too?"
"He played a very minor part. He was one of my students for a time. Usually, he was completely infatuated with me. Some people…" She sighed. "Serve a purpose. It's as simple as that. And he served his. He was easy to arouse. He couldn't forget me even after he joined the sect. And I got the DNA I needed. That bit with the hemlock was amusing, wasn't it?"
Her facial expression changed, and for a moment she looked wistful. "It's going to be okay again," she said, nearly whispering now.
"You can get help," he said.
Instantly, the vengeful Isa returned. "Help to what? To become part of this mind-warping mediocrity, this third-rate society? There is no society, didn't you know that?"
He realized this was part of her method, the depersonalization of those around her, a military technique used to justify destroying an enemy. It had turned Palle into a psychotic empty shell into which a religious sect could stuff new truths. Trokic was tired and nervous about being dizzy. He wasn't sure some of the sounds he was hearing were real. Fever and lack of sleep were catching up to him. He badly needed to lie down, or at least sit for a while, rest his legs. But none of that mattered; from what she'd said, he knew she wasn't going to let him leave here alive.
Chapter Sixty-Five
"Dammit."
Lisa was in a rage; she knew the area and had taken the wheel, but the heavy traffic had slowed to a crawl. They were being professional and correct toward each other again, yet she could smell his soft, immaculate skin, which churned up the butterflies in her stomach. But mostly, she was in doubt. What if the situation became tense and Isa Nielsen fought them? Indeed, why would the woman surrender peacefully? Did Lisa have what it takes to stand up to a pure psycho who wouldn't hesitate to kill? Could she back up her colleagues? She'd wanted to work in Homicide, and now she had her wish, but she'd never expected to be facing a serial killer with an agenda they could only guess at. Her heart pounded; the steering wheel was covered with sweat. Jacob sat beside her, fidgeting in his seat.
"Jump the curb." He pointed out through what had become a downpour. The windshield wipers screeched. She shifted gears, checked her rearview mirror, and deftly drove up onto the bike lane and sidewalk. They passed a line of cars and buses, and finally, they were free of the traffic.
"You're one hell of a driver. How much longer before we're there?"
> "Five minutes, if we don't get caught in traffic again." She was in the coast road's middle lane and had passed every slower vehicle.
"Five minutes is a long time if he's in danger," he said, frantic now. "I'm calling for backup."
"Okay, yeah, tell them to send another car out there, no sirens or lights, but quick. Give them her description. We don't know what she's planning on doing, but at least we'll be on the safe side if something goes wrong."
Chapter Sixty-Six
Her face was barely visible in the dying light reflected off the shoreline. He estimated how much time had passed since he'd spoken with Lisa. The woman facing him was beginning to feel she had the upper hand in this game, where not even Goffman or any game theorists could help him. Where the least sign of deceit or lack of character would be punished.
"You're right," he said, his voice firm and unwavering, yet with a measure of resignation meant to stymie her. "But I need to know, Isa, it's…it's really the most important part of all this to me. How did you get him all the way from the rest area to the pond?"
She smiled brilliantly but briefly, the way she would had he been a student who asked an intelligent question. "Daniel, Daniel, I thought you had that figured out. Now that you've found the blanket. We dragged him down the trail."
"We? Who's we?"
"Europa and I. It was the most difficult part of all, in fact, because she was whimpering so much of the time. She didn't like the smell of blood."
