by Inger Wolf
And she was changing, too. Along with him. Her clothes hung looser. She smelled bad, and her hair also was all tangled. It was as if nothing really mattered anymore. She could barely remember what her mom looked like. Or how it felt to bury her head in Zenna's fur. The long walks on the trails around Anchorage, the way Joanne looked at her so lovingly, her diaries under her bed at home. All these were distant memories from another time, fragments flying through her head. All that existed now was this moment.
"What am I going to do with you?" he whispered. "You're all wrong. Your voice sounds different."
He screamed loudly. "Do you even know your eyes aren't the right color?"
She didn't answer. Afraid that whatever she said would just make him angrier. He walked over to his brushes and picked them up. Drew a big eye on the wall and painted it green. It stared at her. Pierced her. He breathed in short spurts and ground his teeth. Then he jumped over to her and pulled her up by the arm; she screamed as he dragged her over to the wall.
"Can't you see?" he hissed. "That's how it should be. Like that, like that. Why don't they look like that?"
Then he lowered his voice. "I made a mistake. It was too dark. You should have been buried. Like her. In a dark hole. Do you know you're sitting in a dollhouse with your family?"
He laughed. "Christ Almighty that sounds funny. You're sitting in a dollhouse, you should have been there. It was her dollhouse."
Her heart pounded. Dollhouse? What was he talking about? Bury her? Her lower lip trembled, tears came to her eyes, and her legs were about to give out.
He shoved her to the floor. A long splinter dug into her palm. The pain in her hand, lower arm, and knees jolted her. But her fear was stronger, fear of what could come.
He walked over to the dresser in the corner and pulled out the drawer. He picked up a gun and played with it, pointed it around the room. She heard it click. What was that sound? Her teeth were chattering. Was he going to shoot her? Really going to shoot her?
"I'm not your family," he informed her in a friendly voice. "You don't have any family now, Marie. They're all dead."
"What did you say?" she whispered. She didn't want to hear any more. It couldn't be right. And yet, somewhere inside her, she knew it was true, she could feel it. All her hopes collapsed. She decided she wasn't going to believe him.
"I said, they're all dead. Your mother, your dad, your brother. I shot them in the head. Even though they begged for their lives."
Her tears trickled down, and she tilted her head.
"You're not going to say anything? Talk to me, goddammit, kid. You're all wrong, but you're the only one I have to talk to."
"It's not true," she said. She tried to sound forceful, but her voice was weak.
"It is, it's true."
"Why?" she whispered.
"It was your dad's fault, Marie. Understand? I had to do it because of your dad. He's the one who took my mom from me. He stole her."
She didn't understand what he was talking about. Her dad? Stealing her? How could he have done that?
"I think we'll go for a ride, Marie. Soon."
Chapter Fifty-Seven
THEY UNFOLDED the map on the bed. It showed a section of Alaska that stretched out in a square around Anchorage. It was dotted with circles around several areas, primarily on the Kenai Peninsula.
"The hunting is good down there, like you've heard," Angie said. "A few guys from the station go there, they told me. You can hunt everything. Moose, deer, brown and black bear, lots of other animals. It's divided up into several hunting zones, so I don't know where you can hunt what. But Griffin did well in some places. Or they did."
"If we assume Asger Vad was down there," Trokic said, "maybe he took Griffin along later to hunt, and then he met Debbie and got something going with her. Then maybe it's important. Okay. It was early September. Is hunting legal that time of year?"
"I don't know the hunting seasons, but it's okay to shoot moose. And I'm sure a lot of other animals."
"And then there's that mark separate from the others; we don't know what it refers to." Trokic tapped the map with his finger. "What's that area like?"
"I don't know. They have all kinds of maps down at the desk, I'll pick one up. Debbie was a tourist, so maybe she went for something touristy."
"What about the national park?"
"I can't imagine she met Asger there. It's enormous, and hunting is illegal. And it's on the other side of the peninsula. I'll get the map."
TEN MINUTES LATER, she spread a new map out. "This is the peninsula. The eastern and southeastern side is mostly the national forest and park. You can see the range of mountains here. Lots of glaciers. But his mark is farther west. It's marshland, lakes, forests, hills, and I'm sure a lot of hiking trails."
"I don't know what it all means," Trokic said. "What else is there in the area?"
"Not much. Buildings are few and far between. A few public shelters, I think. The first-come-first-served type of thing."
"Can we talk to somebody who's responsible for them?"
"I'll ask at the station. They must know someone who knows something, who to talk to. There's that guide, Hutchinson. Maybe we can still dig him up."
Chapter Fifty-Eight
IT TOOK a long time and many miles to find Hutchinson, who was on the outskirts of the national park. It was well past noon when they finally arrived. He stood staring at a glacier with a notebook and a pen, mumbling to himself. His white hair stuck out all over—he needed a haircut, badly. According to the Soldotna police, he was not only a guide, but also a biologist and, in general, a bit of a science nut. Trokic found it very hard to understand what life the man expected to find in the block of ice in front of them. But okay, maybe he would luck out and uncover a frozen mammoth in there. Hutchinson was a professional student, it was said, which was something of an accomplishment in the United States, from a financial standpoint. He sighed demonstrably when he noticed them. Not exactly a positive trait for a guide, Trokic thought.
"So, who sent you out here? It's quite a drive. And what do you want? I'm chopping out some ice samples. Do you realize there's life in even the oldest glaciers, hundreds of thousands of years old?"
They didn't know that. He spread his arms dramatically. "Think about that the next time you contribute to global warming. What could be in there? It's not all frozen mammoths and Stone Age corpses. There could be bacteria that hasn't seen the light of day since before there were humans on Earth."
Angie introduced them while Trokic looked out over the snowy landscape. They stood in a ravine with mountains on both sides, and the glacier was a long snake twisting around one side. The biologist looked like he'd chop the entire glacier up to find something interesting.
"We hear you've been working several years as a guide on the peninsula, at tourist offices, things like that. We know that a woman named Debbie and her children took a trip here someplace. Most likely hiking some trails."
He frowned and reluctantly looked away from the glacier ice. He scratched a hairy mole on his cheek. "Debbie, Debbie…did she have long blonde hair, a real looker?"
"I think that's fair to say," Angie said, kicking up a spray of snow with her boot.
"Yes, indeed, I remember her, sure do. Debbie Connolly."
For an instant, the world stood still. Trokic and Angie exchanged a look, and his brain was already racing in high gear. Adam Connolly had just been in the station. Could the name be a coincidence?
"They just wanted to take a few hikes, her and the kids," Hutchinson said, unaware of the startled looks on their faces. "So, I pointed them to some easy, safe trails in the hills. I had a drink with her in the bar the night before, in fact. She was traveling around, trying to give her ex the slip. He was something of a psychopath. Donald, that was his name."
"Did she mention meeting anyone here?" Trokic said.
Hutchinson stared at him. "Who could that be? Say, does this have something to do with that volcano researcher? Di
d she do it? Isn't that something? I'd never have guessed that."
Angie flashed a smile. "Easy now. It's highly unlikely she did. But we think she might have met Asger Vad at some point."
"She never mentioned it, not a word. She said they'd be going on their hike and then they'd move on the very next day. Out of the state, away from her ex. If she'd met a man she was interested in, she would've stuck around. That's not the impression I had at all. I even made a few inquiries in that direction myself, and she said she hadn't met the right man yet."
Trokic mulled that over. In all likelihood, she hadn't met Asger, at least not in a way for him to be a threat to Debbie's ex. Suddenly, their theory felt thinner than ice. "Do you remember the names of the children?"
"Huh! How do you expect a man to remember some kids' names ten years back when he was busy staring at the mother? She probably mentioned their names, but I have no idea. I do remember she had an older son in the lower forty-eight, he'd just started at a university. I remember because she was worried about him; he'd spent so much time with his psychopathic father. His name was Adam."
For a few moments, Trokic felt he was in free fall. Adam Connolly. Who could have picked up a dollhouse stored in Anchorage. If his mother hadn't done so.
"Fact is, we'd agreed to hook up the day after they took their hike. Same bar, same time. I waited on her all night, but she never showed up."
He paused while thinking something over. "The strangest thing about all this is, her daughter was wild about this teddy bear she'd bought, she drug it around with her all the time. But Debbie didn't want her to take it along on their hike, said it would have been too much trouble, and she didn't have room for it in her backpack. So, she asked me to hold it until the next day. But she never came back. I mean, really…who wouldn't come back for their daughter's teddy bear? Fact is, I still have it back home."
Chapter Fifty-Nine
MARK SMITH'S blinding migraine had caused him to throw up. He'd fumbled around out in the bathroom with a suppository, and he could barely function from exhaustion. Several people had told him he looked like a corpse, that he should go home and go to bed for several hours, and he'd just begun to think that maybe he should do just that. He could always come back later.
When his landline phone rang, he was prepared to bite the head off any journalist who dared contribute to his condition. He sat down in his office chair and picked up the phone.
"Angie? Why aren't you calling my cell phone? I thought it was a journalist; they've been on my ass all day."
"Your cell phone is off. I've heard your stupid recorded voice at least three times. The battery didn't run down, did it? You didn't forget to recharge, did you?"
He pulled it out of his pocket. Dead. It had happened while he'd been throwing up in the bathroom. Goddamn smart ass Angie. "It went dead, sorry." He rummaged around his desk for his charger. "So, what do you want?"
Excited now, she told him what they had found out. "So, Connolly has a problem. And we need to bring him in for questioning again. To hell with Redoubt. And since we're here in Soldotna, you or someone else is going to have to do it."
SMITH BROUGHT an extra chair into the small interview room, where a sullen, balding lawyer in a much-too-tight suit had joined them. Adam Connolly had on a pair of worn jeans and a faded blue sweater. He seemed nervous; he bit a fingernail as he looked around.
Smith started out on a friendly note. "How is our mutual friend doing? Redoubt?" He sat down.
Connolly avoided Smith's eyes. "I think it's going to happen within the next few days. Just speaking from my personal experience."
"And you're in charge of how it's being dealt with?"
Connolly nodded. "The irony is that Asger would have been more precise. Right now, I just want out of here and to get back to work. I'm the one with the most experience with Redoubt, now that Asger is gone. And my boss isn't really into it anymore."
His voice turned a bit more shrill. "I have to get back. They need me there. I don't understand what I'm doing here. I have an alibi for the night Asger was killed, you might remember. Slawomir confirmed it."
Smith sighed. "Okay, listen. We have new information. And we don't trust your boss's memory. Something is very wrong. Very wrong."
"But maybe we can do this another time? I have to get to the observatory."
"We appreciate your efforts," Smith said. "The thing is this. My people have tracked a dollhouse from down on the Kenai Peninsula. It turns out that it belonged to a Debbie Connolly, who had a son named Adam. Do you have something to say about that? It sounds as if it could be your mother. Who could have known Asger."
Shaken now, Connolly stared at Smith, then his eyes darted around the floor. "So, you found out about it? Okay. It's not so good."
"You don't have to answer," his lawyer said, peering at him over a pair of reading glasses.
Smith smiled. "But I would appreciate it. You have nothing to hide, you say, and you do want to get back to your volcano."
Ten seconds went by; Connolly rubbed his temples and breathed out heavily. "Yeah. I guess there's no way around it now."
"Yeah? Can you be a bit more precise?"
"Debbie was my mother."
"And?"
An even longer pause followed. The lawyer looked nervous; he started tapping his pen against his notebook. Finally, he reminded Connolly that he didn't need to say anything, but the volcano researcher was sweating and fidgeting, his legs hopping underneath the table.
"It's a long story," he said tensely, as if he were trying to make one up on the spot.
"A story I'd like to hear," Smith said. "I have all day for this. I couldn't care less if the volcano explodes. I'm sitting safely inside a building designed by the man who did Scotland Yard. I'm very comfortable."
Connolly stared at him again and hesitated. "Well, okay then, I…I was in college in Oklahoma at the time. She was traveling around up here with my little sister and brother. To shake my dad, she said. And when Dad found out she left, he followed her. I don't know exactly how he found her, but he had friends at a phone company. They gave him some information about her cell phone, I think. Like I said, I was in Oklahoma and didn't know anything, but then one day he came home with my little brother and said my mom and little sister had an accident, and they were dead. He wasn't the one who did it, but he said he was afraid the cops would think so. He was under a restraining order. So, he grabbed my little brother and took off."
"Believe me, I was in shock." Connolly shook his head as if he really, really wanted Smith to believe him.
"An accident? What kind of accident?"
"He said they'd been shot. It was horrible. I've tried to forget it all these years."
"That can hardly be called an accident," Smith said. "Who shot them? Your father? We're not hearing good things about him. In fact, I've heard people use the word psychopath. And, of course, these things aren't necessarily hereditary, but it does seem—"
"Dad didn't shoot her." He narrowed his eyes. "It was some hunters. It was terrible. He came home and told me, and I stood there…well, what could I do? Call the police and tell them the story, and risk Dad going to prison? Maybe even executed? We needed him."
Smith stood up and stretched. His mouth was dry. His headache had disappeared, and his whole body felt tense. "What hunters?"
"I don't know, but you know how many tourists come up here to hunt bear. It was probably one of them who didn't know what they were doing."
"I think you know more about this than you're admitting."
Connolly laughed. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. But like I said, Dad was convinced he would be blamed. So, he buried them and left. I never got the details."
"Honestly Adam, you only have your father's word for all that."
"That's it, that's the whole story."
"How long have you been at the Volcano Observatory?"
"Five years this June."
"So, in all that time, you didn't find out that Asge
r was in the area at that time? That it could have been him?"
Even Connolly's black curly hair seemed to be sweating in the tiny room. "What? What do you mean? I don't know anything about that."
"In fact, I can imagine an alarm bell ringing when you saw the papers at the observatory. When you read that a web camera had been installed the day your mother was killed. In the same area. You knew that Asger hunted. Maybe you also knew it was exactly in that area. You could have told your father. Back then. Or later. Recently."
Connolly was pale. His lower lip trembled and he dried his hands on his pants. He was obviously trying to gather his thoughts. "It must've been a coincidence."
Smith rolled up his sleeves. "You're not telling me much I can use."
"Which he doesn't need to do," the lawyer spat out. Smith wanted to wring his neck.
"How do I get ahold of your father? If it was a hunting accident, he might have wanted revenge. That is if he didn't shoot your mother himself."
Connolly grimaced. "You're out of luck. The old bastard died a long time ago."
Smith sat down again and stared straight into Connolly's eyes. "That leaves us with you. And you have a fantastic double motive. You thought it was strange that Asger the hunter had been in exactly the same area as your mother, on the exact day she died. Maybe you confronted him with that and he confirmed it? And then you could take your revenge and snatch the director job to boot."
Connolly swallowed.
"Come on," Smith said.
The suspect covered his face with his hands and sobbed. He said nothing for quite a while. Simply breathed heavily through his fingers. At last, he straightened up and stared at a point on the wall. "I did it," he whispered. "I'm sorry."
"What did you say?" Smith wanted to be sure the microphone picked up the confession.
"I killed them," Connolly said. "All of them. Asger. Griffin. Their families. It was revenge."