Death on Pilot Hill (An Inspector Harald Sohlberg Mystery)

by Jens Amundsen

  “Anton Rønning finally confesses when Inspector Eliassen offers him a chance to explain himself and therefore perhaps avoid prison here and the death penalty overseas if Rønning can show that he’s sick enough and in need of psychiatric treatment.

  “Eliassen tells Rønning that a full confession with all the grisly details of all his crimes will help prove Rønning’s insanity. Rønning sees that he might even get out of the all-too-lenient sentence of a maximum twenty-one years in prison that he’d receive here in Norway for all the molestations and rapes and killings.”

  “Ja. I can see his motivation in confessing.”

  “Of course the ultimate motivation is that the Smiley Face Killer knows for sure that he will get the traditional Russian method of execution with a Makarov pistol shot behind the right ear if he’s ever extradited to any of the Russian Republics where he committed dozens of crimes. Anton Rønning confesses that he is the serial killer but still does not offer details.

  “The weekend comes and when it’s time on Monday to provide the details Rønning instead gets a lawyer and tries to limit his confession to molesting children while he worked as a tax collector for a few years as a young man. Of course that’s long before he started killing.”

  “Again . . . that’s typical . . . offering a partial confession to throw off the investigator.”

  “Well a partial confession won’t do for Eliassen . . . so he shows Rønning how he’s caught Rønning in all these lies during the interrogation. Eliassen tells Rønning that he now knows the exact details of Rønning’s work-and-travel schedules and how these match up perfectly with all of the times and places of the horrible crimes. Eliassen shows Rønning how all of these facts and circumstances will be enough to convict him in any country with the death penalty.

  “Eliassen reminds Rønning about the knives and ropes that Eliassen found in Rønning’s briefcase . . . and he also reminds Rønning about the numerous eyewitnesses who saw Rønning at the crime scenes trolling for victims.

  “For example, one woman in the United States . . . in Miami Florida even took a picture of Rønning at the beach where he was trolling for children . . . of course two boys were later found dead near his hotel. Rønning’s stupid lawyer says they’ll go to trial and the idiot leaves the room. Eliassen decides to again toss Rønning a lifesaver by making the offhand comment, ‘It’s too bad you want to do it this way when you could’ve gotten off with insanity.’”

  “Does it work?”

  “Like a charm. It works perfectly well because Inspector Eliassen knows the killer’s mind . . . and in Rønning’s mind Rønning knows that he’s doing totally insane and repulsive crimes and yet he’s using his sanity and logic to prevent capture by leading a so-called normal life with his wife and children and grandchildren. . . .

  “You see . . . Rønning used his sanity to avoid capture by never leaving evidence at the crime scenes . . . and he used his sanity to evade the nationwide manhunt by not killing at all for long periods of time . . . or by killing in distant locations when he has to do that to throw off investigators.

  “So . . . Inspector Eliassen gets Rønning to use the sane part of his mind to logically chose the insane part of himself to avoid going to prison and getting extradited . . . basically Rønning’s again been offered the chance to get off scot-free by having psychiatrists treat him for a few years and later declare him sane.”

  “That’s awful Chief Inspector.”

  “Ja . . . the ugly truth is that it’s a great deal for the killer . . . no? After all . . . if some shrink could ever come up with a treatment to cure Rønning from his insane compulsions then it’s all real good for the killer. He’s finally free of his insane half. And if they can’t treat him then he gets a second proverbial bite at the apple when he’s released after his maximum twenty-one-year sentence here in Norway.”

  “Uuughh!”

  “That’s the way of the world unfortunately.”

  “So what happens to the Smiley Face Killer?”

  “Anton Rønning breaks down completely and confesses. Inspector Eliassen even gets him talking about his childhood . . . Rønning breaks down in tears . . . literally trembling and shaking when he talks about the horrible childhood he had with a mother and grandmother who beat him mercilessly. The two women starved him for days while he was locked up in a small dark closet. He also talks about how he had been molested and raped as a child by his mother’s boyfriend. The confession lasts almost two weeks.”

  “Wow! That’s something else.”

  “Do you see Constable Wangelin? . . . You must get inside their heads. You must find their passions and fears . . . find out their true thoughts however irrational or illogical or disgusting. . . .You must see the world from their point-of-view.”

  “How will this Smiley Face Killer help us?”

  “A craftsman always recognizes similar handiwork. Rønning will tell us if a stranger took Karl Haugen. Rønning knows all about taking little boys.”

  “What an animal.”

  Sohlberg glanced at Constable Wangelin. She shook her head in disgust.

  “Ja Constable Wangelin. You are right. Rønning was . . . is an animal . . . a predator. . . . By the early seventies Anton Rønning had already killed at least twelve children here in Norway and Sweden and many many more in Germany and Russia and the United States. And Hungary. Bulgaria. Spain. Portugal. Greece.

  “During a two-week summer vacation he killed three boys in Iceland alone and four in Greenland. He was a master at luring and taking the children without anyone seeing him in broad daylight . . . much like Chikatilo in Russia. I’ve always suspected that Anton Rønning killed many more innocents in Canada and the U.S.A.”

  “What was his M.O.?”

  “He’d lure them with a story about him or his pet being lost. He’d molest them and then kill them . . . all under twenty minutes . . . because he didn’t want them to live with the nightmare of the molestation . . . the same nightmare that had haunted and tortured him since he was molested as a six-year-old. Or as he told me . . . ‘I needed to break the chain’ . . . and he did. Whenever possible he used a heavy gold chain to strangle them. He then left a Smiley Face painted in lipstick or red crayon or red ink marker on their bodies.”

  “Smiley Face . . . what’s that?”

  “The sixties and seventies had two symbols . . . the peace symbol with the three branches and the smiling face with two dots for eyes and a u-shaped smile. Anton Rønning picked the well-known Smiley Face because it symbolized the fake happy face that molestation victims are forced to put on for the world . . . a generic smiley face that reinforces the anonymity and secrets of the victims of molestation. Eliassen even got Rønning to tell him about several children whose bodies have never been found.”

  “Wait. Just who is this Inspector Eliassen? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “A genius.”

  “The name doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “Shouldn’t be. Lars Eliassen spent his entire life as a small town policeman from the Romsdal valley . . . never cared for promotions. . . . He put in fifteen years as a constable . . . then ten as an inspector and five as chief inspector in the Møre og Romsdal district. He never sought the spotlight . . . he avoided it . . . let his bosses do all the talking and get all the credit especially when he got a full confession from the Smiley Face Killer. Afterwards Eliassen refused to be promoted above chief inspector.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “I . . . I mean he . . . he investigated. . . .” Sohlberg decided to go for the half-truth instead of a lie. He could not tell her the whole truth. One Norwegian tradition that he decide to observe was that co-workers never made friendships at work or otherwise discussed in detail their personal lives at work.

  “He investigated what Chief Inspector?”

  “Eliassen investigated a fatal climbing accident that I witnessed . . . you see I used to climb back then. Someone fell and Eliassen had to investigate and confirm
it was an accident.”

  “How sad!”

  “Ja . . . something like that makes you think about life and whether you’re doing what you really love and want to be doing . . . less than a year after the accident I gave up my law practice and became a police officer just like Eliassen.

  “We later became friends . . . he had impressed me so much with his questions . . . and how can I phrase it? His compassion. His understanding. I’ll never forget how he got inside my mind and immediately saw that the climber’s fall was an accident.”

  “Did he think it was murder . . . or suicide?”

  “For a time. Inspector Eliassen had to investigate all the possibilities. That’s what a good cop does . . . no?”

  “Ja. I would’ve liked meeting him.”

  “I saw him on and off for a long time. He died two years ago. I came to his funeral. Too bad he’s not here or we’d go get his advice.”

  Sohlberg closed his eyes. He wanted to tell Wangelin that the dead are still with us long after the grief fades away and that even if you are an atheist who does not believe in the afterlife the fact remains that the dead are still with us even if just by leaving that empty place behind in our hearts or memories. Karoline gone. Harald Junior gone. Lars Eliassen gone. Soon others would be gone. His parents and then he himself and Emma Sohlberg would be gone. Death and grieving.

  He had to find out who in Karl Haugen’s family mourned the empty spot left behind by Karl Haugen.

  Who was in grief over Karl Haugen?

  Who was not grieving over the missing boy?

  The one who was not grieving over the missing boy is the kidnapper and maybe even the killer of Karl Haugen.

  Was the Haugen home a house of mourning?

  ~ ~ ~

  The car stopped. Sohlberg opened his eyes and he was surprised he had fallen deeply asleep.

  For how long?

  They had pulled into a Statoil gas station. His eyes popped wide open when he saw the $ 12 a gallon price on the digital display. That was 400% more than what he paid in the USA. He wondered why Norwegians put up with outrageous prices at home when their government-owned Statoil exported billions of dollars of oil to other countries where gasoline was far cheaper than in Norway.

  As soon as they got back on the road Sohlberg said:

  “Sorry I fell asleep. You must think I’m getting old. . . .”

  “No. I stopped back there at the gas station because I too was getting sleepy with the afternoon heat and that big sandwich I ate a couple of miles ago. Do you want some coffee? My thermos holds almost a gallon.”

  “No thanks. I no longer drink coffee . . . haven’t in years.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t drink coffee. All good Norwegians drink plenty of it. Why did you stop?”

  “We were living in the United States . . . in Utah where it was impossible to find good coffee.”

  “Why? Don’t the Americans have good coffee?”

  “They do but most of Utah is Mormon and they don’t drink coffee or black tea . . . or alcohol for religious and health reasons. Anyway . . . feel free to drink whatever you want from my case of Farris water.”

  A few minutes later they both stretched to shake off their grogginess. Wangelin drove expertly at high speeds on the highway.

  “Constable Wangelin . . . tell me about the Haugen family. Tell me everything. I’m meeting the father and stepmother tomorrow.”

  “I’m looking forward to that. We interviewed them five times each but they gave jumbled confusing explanations that only made sense when you heard them and no sense at all after you left the parents and had time to think about their statements. In hindsight . . . they bamboozled us.”

  “Let’s start with the biological mother.”

  “I feel sorry for her and what she’s going through but she’s a bit of a flake.”

  “ How so?”

  “She’s not crazy but somewhat slightly unbalanced.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ll notice that her hair style and hair color change radically and constantly. One day it’s straight black-hair . . . the next day frizzy blond-ish hair . . . a week later she has dreadlocks and a month later she has bleached spiky hair. . . .”

  “Come now Constable Wangelin. Surely her hairstyle is not that important.”

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no. Why does she do it? I can’t even imagine the amount of time she puts into fixing her hair.”

  “You should’ve asked her. Why do you change your hair style and hair color so frequently? How much time does it take? Her answers truthful or not would’ve been revealing.”

  “Ja! I should’ve asked.”

  “You’ll see as you get more experienced how those little open-ended questions add up . . . the innocent little questions about so-called meaningless or trivial or irrelevant matters almost always bring you tremendous insights into the person’s mind . . . that’s what you have to do . . . ask ask ask . . . dig the truth out.”

  “Ja.”

  “Ask questions even when it feels very uncomfortable. Sometimes the stress in awkward personal interactions will break down the walls and let you take a peak inside.”

  “But it feels so awkward to ask personal questions of a stranger.”

  “I know it goes against our famous Norwegian reserve. But you have to do it to be an effective police officer. You have to put aside our Viking tradition of living in extreme isolation because of the steep mountains between each fjord . . . you have to get past the ingrained mind-set where everyone from the next isolated fjord is a total stranger who speaks a totally different dialect.”

  “I never saw it that way but it’s so true.”

  “Tell me about Maya Engen. Start with her reaction to Karl’s disappearance.”

  “In a nutshell . . . she’s a woman with a guilty conscience . . . for abandoning Karl Haugen when he needed her the most.”

  “How so?”

  “In her mind she brought Karl into the broken home of a failed marriage . . . she separated from Karl’s father less than two years after marrying him. The marriage went bad shortly after the first year anniversary . . . if not beforehand.”

  “What caused the breakup?”

  “The father is vague on the reasons but he insists that he and his wife led separate lives while living together as husband and wife.”

  “Interesting . . . a man who insists that things are one way under his roof when things are in fact another before the eyes of the law. In other words he was married in the eyes of the law to Maya Engen but in his eyes he’s not married to her under his own roof. The man seems to live in his own universe . . . his own version of reality no? He is married but insists he is not. Interesting. A man who denies reality . . . or creates his own reality.”

  “He says that their separate lives were the reason for why he started dating Agnes Haugen then known as Agnes Sørensen . . . her maiden name.”

  “What’s his first wife’s version of the breakup?”

  “According to Maya Engen their marriage ended because of his adultery with Agnes. Of course he continues insisting that by the time he met Agnes the marriage was on the rocks and that they were already separated. I checked and found out that really was not true . . . he was still living with his wife in the same house when he began a relationship with Agnes.”

  “That was gutsy of him.”

  “Or cowardly. Anyway . . . they got a divorce when Maya Engen was eight months pregnant with Karl. And by the time Karl was born the father had his new woman Agnes living in the house with him.”

  “How convenient.”

  “It gets more convenient for him as you’ll see in a few minutes. Gunnar and Maya have Karl on April . . . they file for divorce in May . . . and the divorce is final five months later in October . . . just two years after they got married.”

  “He’s a fickle man,” said Sohlberg who detested uncertain men. “The wishy-washy sort who change wives like they change shirts or shoes. A fickle man wou
ld explain why Karl’s mother is always changing her hairstyle and colors.”

  “How so Chief Inspector?”

  “She does that to keep a fickle man happy . . . the constant hairstyle and hair color changes mean that he has a new wife to look at every day.”

  “Very good Chief Inspector. That fits perfectly with her behavior. Also she was briefly married before she met and married Karl’s father.”

  “So the Haugen marriage was her second marriage by age thirty?”

  “Ja Chief Inspector. She had a son with her first husband and that boy has always lived full-time with the father.”

  “Huh! So she too changes husbands as frequently as her hair style and color. Think of it. She’s now on husband number three by the age of thirty-eight. Or an average of one husband and one child per decade. . . .”