by Inger Wolf
His heart heavy now, he walked around the corner to the kitchen and stopped abruptly. Something lay on the kitchen table; he could just make out its form in the darkness. Something square and solid. His right hand felt around on the wall for the light switch, and a moment later the room was brightly lit.
It was a dollhouse. He squinted at the unexpected sight. It was big, made from some sort of dark hardwood, varnished. And it looked expensive. Even at a distance, he could see it was of exceptional quality; someone had spent ages on every tiny detail. Asger Vad had never seen it before. It certainly hadn't been there when he made the rounds and locked all the doors before midnight. It was a gift for Marie, it must be. But why? Christmas wasn't on the horizon, and she'd just received an ungodly number of presents for her birthday. He frowned. In light of the circumstances and the brutal message from the day before, it was wrong, so wrong, to buy her this.
He leaned over and peered through the open windows of the dollhouse. His heart began beating wildly at the sight of four dolls sitting around a dining table inside. Two adults, two children. A family. Well-dressed. And in the middle of the table, a tiny mound of ashes. He pulled back. Ashes? What was that all about? He heard Zenna breathing heavily in the washroom; the dog was getting old, and sometimes it sounded like a locomotive chugging. Tonight it was bad, though. Unusually bad.
He stiffened. Something was moving in the shadows. Something that had nothing to do with the streetlight outside. Thoughts about unlocked doors raced through his head. Then the figure stepped out of the darkness, and Asger swallowed hard, his mouth dry as a bone; suddenly he felt weak, powerless. How had this man in front of him managed to get inside the house? Why hadn't Zenna barked? Something was horribly wrong.
"What are you doing here?" His voice sounded much too shrill in his own ears.
The man didn't answer. He smiled weakly and shook his head, as if he were apologizing. And suddenly, Asger knew who had placed the dollhouse on the table. And why.
Chapter One
Angie Johnson could still recall the volcanic ash scratching her throat. That was her first thought as she approached the house, the crime scene, in the murky morning darkness, the snow crackling under her feet. Several years ago, the ash had gathered in a threatening mushroom cloud above Mount Redoubt and drifted over Anchorage, falling on the town, spreading a black film over the snow outside. The sulfuric air irritated everyone's throat and eyes. The birds perched silently in the trees, all air traffic ground to a halt, and a great deal of the state's population sat glued to television screens, following what was happening. A gigantic river of mud had flowed down the mountain in the Drift River Valley in the direction of an oil terminal, and everyone held their breath while much of the six million gallons of oil was driven away as quickly as possible. They had breathed a sigh of relief when a dike prevented the rest from causing a still-greater natural catastrophe.
That was the first time she'd seen the Danish volcanologist, Asger Vad. He had towered above everyone at the round table in the television studio, and his deep voice and gruff expression behind his round glasses had calmed the newscaster and the Alaskan population. The catastrophe had been avoided, the volcanic ash cloud would soon pass, the health hazard was practically non-existent, and air traffic would soon resume.
Angie had believed him. Fifteen years as a researcher. Employed at the Anchorage Volcano Observatory. One of the world's foremost experts, it had been said. And the town was back to normal after weeks of volcanic bubbling. It wasn't easy being a neighbor to an entire chain of slumbering volcanoes.
Now he was behind this door, inside his house. And not just him. His whole family was there, all of them dead. One of the two officers standing guard at the driveway, a stout man in his fifties, wiped the snow off his blank face and nodded at her. "I just don't know what to tell you." He pulled his hat further down over his ears. "You better take a deep breath. Did you hear about the dollhouse?"
She shook her head. "No, what about it?"
His eyes darted around and his voice sounded a bit shaky. "It's sitting there on the table. It's really sick."
"I can handle it," she mumbled.
She swallowed heavily, fastened a hair tie around her long black hair, and put on a hairnet and mask. It was in the lower 20s with a light wind; snow from two cars parked in the driveway swirled into her face. A short time earlier, while drinking her morning coffee, she'd been called in by Sergeant Mark Smith. He'd told her she would be heading up the investigation on this case, and she had a serious case of butterflies.
The two-story wooden house was painted an off-white. Round bushes lined the wall in front of a small, snow-covered lawn, and someone had made an eyeless snowman that faced the street. The small front porch was made of dark-stained wood, and the two steps up to it creaked. The front door was halfway open, as it had been at four o’clock that morning when the neighbor was leaving for work. The family dog had been barking like crazy inside, too, so she had called 911. Six techs had been hard at it since then.
Angie stomped the snow off her shoes on the mat in front of the door, then she slipped on a pair of shoe covers and gloves. She opened the door wide and walked inside the house, which was so cold that she could see her breath. It smelled of wood, food left over from the previous evening's meal, a hint of orange. And the ash. Harsh dust. It reminded her of the Mount Redoubt eruption. She thought of her people, the native legends of volcanoes. About eruptions that darkened the sky.
The moment she stepped into the open kitchen, she saw the family. Despite the officer's warning, she froze and gasped for air.
"Morning, Angie. Welcome to hell." The technician, Ian Brown, gave her a strained smile. "This is the main stage. We're almost finished inside, so enjoy the show."
Angie's eyes darted around the table as she tried to absorb the many details. The three members of the family, the dollhouse, the ash. She felt the blood draining from her head at the horrifying sight. Asger Vad sat at the end of the dark table, his arms, elbows, and hands resting flat on it. His close-set, slightly somber eyes were now empty, staring straight in front of him. At her, she thought at first; the dead, piercing eyes and downturned mouth startled her. But, in fact, he was looking straight at what lay on the table. He had visible marks on his throat and wrists. And a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Ian followed her eyes.
"There's gunpowder residue around the entrance wound," he said. "All three of them were shot at close range. A straightforward execution."
The two other family members sat on each side of Asger. A woman in her mid-forties, wearing a red sweater, her hair set up in a bun. Two empty eyes above powdered high cheekbones, staring at the same thing as her husband. Her lipstick was smeared, which made her mouth look crooked, sneering.
And the boy. Angie guessed he was about ten years old, a young copy of his father, with the same empty stare directed toward the middle of the table. She shook her head and swallowed. He was just a child.
They all stared at the dollhouse. It was made of dark wood, with small, open windows and a white roof. Under normal circumstances, it would be considered beautiful; someone had taken great pains in building it. Now, though, it looked menacing.
"It's like they're supposed to see it, don't you think?"
She spun around. It was her boss, Mark Smith. His usual suit had been replaced by a pair of black pants and a green sweater, most likely the nearest clothes he could get his hands on that morning. He was a tall man, around fifty, and his easy-going presence immediately made her feel a bit better.
"Take a look inside," he said.
She leaned down and peered through one of the dollhouse's windows at a tiny table with four chairs; on each chair sat a doll of plastic and cloth. Two adults, two children. They were well-dressed, with big smiles, and big eyebrows drawn on their faces. A small, peaked mound of ashes lay on the table. A teaspoonful.
"Christ," she mumbled. Quickly she raised up. "What's this supposed to mean? An
d there are four dolls, but only three people killed. How many were there in the family?"
"That's another problem," her boss said, frowning. "I've been told that one of them is missing."
Angie stared at him. "Missing? What do you mean?"
"They had an eleven-year-old daughter. Marie. She should have been home. The neighbor saw her outside yesterday evening with her brother, building a snowman. She thinks she remembers they were outside until around dinnertime."
Smith bit his lip and studied the scenario. "The question is, why isn't she here at the table? She's definitely not in the house. So, either she went to a friend's house for some unknown reason or else we're missing a body. Or he took her along with him. Which I really hope he didn't. This is enough. More than enough."
Angie nodded and turned to the tech, who was packing his gear in a bag. "Ian, you said this is the main stage. What did you mean?"
"Yeah, well, I meant that there's a backstage too." He blinked his eyes slowly. "It's upstairs, and it's not one goddamn bit pretty."
Chapter Two
So, there was one missing. Had the daughter escaped, or was she in the hands of a totally insane killer? Angie didn't want to think that possibility through.
"They weren't shot here, then?" She heard how dry her voice was.
Smith shook his head and scratched his throat as best he could with gloves on. "No. It all happened upstairs. Come on, the techs are finished up there."
They walked through the kitchen with the light, glass door cabinets and into the television room. Dark wooden floor, big windows. A large set of antlers hung on one wall, together with two abstract paintings and a photo of a mountain. A volcano, Redoubt, if she wasn't mistaken. At one end of the room were two black leather sofas and a coffee table, flanked by a row of large potted plants. A long bookshelf was filled with books, and a standing lamp in the corner was turned on. Had they still been awake when the killer broke in, or did he turn it on to arrange the family around the dining room table? The Vad family's home looked nice, clean. At first glance, they seemed like a well-functioning family. Not like the usual victims in a homicide case.
"How long have they lived in Alaska?" she asked.
"I'm not sure yet," Smith said. "But I think for about fifteen years."
"So, both kids were born here?"
"I would think so, yes."
This home could just as well have been American. They might have lived here a long time, but the parents, at any rate, were Danish citizens.
"It doesn't look like anything happened here," Angie said.
"No, it happened upstairs, like Ian said."
They walked up the winding stairway. "No blood here," she said. "Did the killer wash the victims before dragging them downstairs? Or wasn't there much blood?"
"He did what he could to avoid too much blood. He wanted them to look good at the table."
On the second floor, they went inside a bedroom. The sight nearly knocked the breath out of her. Once it had been a showcase bedroom. White walls, parquet floor, salmon-colored bedding, two large plants, and a green dresser with a mirror above. Now there was blood practically everywhere. She shivered. While she had been sleeping in her own little place at the other end of town, her TV on in the background, a family had been put through the worst possible suffering. The story was right in front of her.
"Christ." She shook herself.
Smith walked around the room. "According to the techs, it went down something like this: the killer broke in by cutting a pane of glass at the back of the house. Most likely early last night. That got him into the pantry next to the washroom, which leads to the living room."
"They don't have an alarm system?"
"No, they probably relied on the dog. It's a big Bernese."
"So, what about the dog? It must have been barking like crazy."
"Yeah, we don't understand it either. Maybe it knew the killer, or maybe he sedated it. It's at a vet clinic, they'll keep it for the time being and take a blood test."
"Okay, so what do the techs think happened then?"
"They say the killer overpowered Asger Vad first. They're not sure where, but at any rate, he was tied to the chair over in the corner there."
He pointed. "Then the wife was shot, here in bed."
"And what about the boy?"
"They think he was dragged in here because it looks like he'd been asleep in his bed. It was unmade."
"So, the boy was shot in here too?"
"Yeah, up in bed. And either before or after, we're not sure when, he stuffed ashes into Vad's throat. As you can see, that made a mess. It's clear that Vad was supposed to see and hear his wife and son die."
He shook his head. "Watch his family being killed. For God's sake. Anyway, the killer took care of Vad while he was in the chair. We'll get a bloodstain pattern analysis, that might shed some light on what happened. Ian's pretty sure about the order of the killings. Not a hundred percent sure, but close."
"But had they gone to bed?" Angie asked. "Because they're all dressed downstairs at the table."
"The killer dressed them when he was finished up here. There's blood on their underclothes, and the techs found a bunch of bloody night clothes, so that must be how it happened. Then he either dragged or carried them all downstairs and arranged them at the table. For his amusement or for some other reason we don't understand."
Angie shook her head. "Whoever did this must be crazier than I can imagine. The dollhouse tells me we're dealing with a totally warped sense of reality."
"Yeah. We've contacted the psychiatric hospital. We'll need information on all former patients who could be dangerous enough to do this, or who have something going on inside their heads about dolls or dollhouses."
Smith's light blue eyes were now dark against his pale face. But he was always pale. Angie looked out the window. A spot between a few tall pines in the yard showed a faint pink dawning. A new day was coming and she'd hardly slept. "The weapon?"
"Probably a high-caliber pistol. Something powerful anyway, all the victims show a large exit wound in the back of the head. But he took all the bullets with him, it's going to be hard to pin it down precisely."
She noticed a gray stuffed rabbit halfway under the bed. There was blood on its fluffy tail. For a moment, she imagined the boy trying to hide under the bed. Hoping he wouldn't be discovered.
"Could it be a break-in that got out of hand?"
"I think we can eliminate that for the time being. Asger's wallet is still down on the kitchen counter, and none of the drawers have been touched. The killer doesn't seem to have been interested in money. It looks like something very personal. Not necessarily aimed at Asger and his family, but certainly personal in the killer's head. And it must have been planned to some extent. It could be he just picked out a family at random, kept them under surveillance for quite a while. It's impossible to say at the moment."
"Or he could've seen Asger on TV."
"Possibly."
She inspected the bloody bedding. It was already turning dark, and she noticed small clumps of tissue and bone fragments here and there. She felt nauseous. Clumps of people. In a way, this was worse than the bodies downstairs. This was a story about pain. So many lives ended in such a short time, in such a small space. And the chair where Asger Vad had sat, now covered in blood, where he had watched his family being killed one by one. Heard them scream, beg, plead for their lives, draw their last breath and wait for death. Had he finally wanted to die himself, just to end the pain? She breathed out heavily.
"There's quite a bit of ash here. Is it from a volcano?"
"We don't know," he said. "Who the hell knows. Maybe you're right, maybe it's some crazy obsessed with volcanos, and he saw Vad on TV. In any case, we'll send the ash to the Volcano Observatory. Our techs have no idea if it can be pinned down to any specific place."
"But why the ash in Vad's throat?" she wondered aloud.
Smith shrugged. He seemed to be taking this better th
an she was; after twenty years in Homicide, he'd seen plenty. "Only the killer knows. I don't, that's for sure."
"So, there's nothing that points to the daughter being in here? Marie?"
"No. Not in here. But it looks like she'd been asleep, and there are four plates and glasses and silverware in the dishwasher, so right now we're assuming she ate dinner here. She's not here, though. She might have been sleeping over with a friend, we have a few people checking on that. I hope so, but I'm not optimistic. She'd been seen making the snowman before dinner. If we are that lucky, I hope we find her before she sees the news. The media is going to be all over this."
"Imagine waking up to this," Angie said. "Your whole family dead."
He looked over at her, concern written on his face. "Yeah, and knowing whoever did it is still out there. We have a briefing at ten o'clock, but Marie is our first priority right now. I want you to talk to her babysitter, she's the last person besides the neighbor who we're certain saw her alive. The neighbor said her name is Joanne, I found her number in an address book downstairs. She's a student at the university. I've already called her and said you were coming."
Angie zipped her coat up. "Okay, I'm on my way."
She took a final look around the bedroom. It was the worst thing she'd seen in her entire life. She noticed a picture of the kids on the dresser. There was blood on the frame, and for a moment she imagined the killer stopping to look at it. Marie was very young in the picture. Maybe five years old. Wearing a pink dress, looking into the camera with a shy smile. Her hair was short, and she had small, pointed ears and dimples.
If you're out there alive, I'll find you. She turned and left the room.
Chapter Three
Detective Daniel Trokic stretched his legs and leaned back in the chair facing Captain Karsten Andersen. He'd just been given the first details of a case halfway around the globe that his boss had apparently taken an interest in. Trokic had sensed something going on from the moment he was called into the office. Right before he was about to dive into a steak. And even worse, just before having a glass of the red wine he'd opened. And he had wondered. It wasn't like his boss to call him into a meeting without very good reason. In fact, it almost always meant something very bad had happened. He hadn't said much on the phone, and because Trokic hadn't heard of any homicide in their district that demanded his presence, he'd been completely in the dark until now.
