Death on Pilot Hill (An Inspector Harald Sohlberg Mystery)
Page 20
“No.”
“Then why would your wife teach him sign language?”
“I . . . well . . . you know . . . she’s a teacher . . . she has a master’s degree in education and a license to teach elementary school.”
“But she’s not licensed to teach deaf children . . . is she?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“She never taught sign language to Thor . . . her first son . . . did she?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“One last time Herr Haugen . . . why would your wife teach your son sign language when he’s not deaf?”
Silence.
“Herr Haugen . . . did your wife teach sign language to Karl so that they could communicate in secret?”
Gunnar Haugen’s eyes dimmed.
Sohlberg’s throat tightened as he realized how out of touch this man was to the reality of his home life where his wife led a separate parallel existence.
“Herr Hagen! Look at me. Did your wife secretly and silently signal your son instructions in sign language for him to leave the school that Friday June fourth?”
Sohlberg looked straight into Gunnar Haugen’s eyes. But the engineer had shut down. His tightly closed eyes told Sohlberg and the world one message: “Leave me alone!” Sohlberg could literally see and feel that the man was withdrawing to some distant place where no one could intrude.
“Herr Haugen . . . you and your wife both told investigators that your son suffered from seizures and yet his doctor says that is not true and has never been true. So tell me . . . whose idea was it to create the fake illness about seizures?”
Silence.
“Whose idea was it to use a non-existent illness to confuse the teacher and the school about which Friday Karl would not be at school but on a doctor’s visit?”
Silence.
“Constable Wangelin . . . please arrest Herr Haugen if he does not answer my questions.”
The tinkling sound of Wangelin’s handcuffs brought Gunnar Haugen back into the room.
“What? . . . What do you want to know?”
“Why did you sign that vague letter to the school telling them that your son would miss school on Friday because of a doctor’s appointment and yet you did not date the letter . . . nor did you specify exactly which Friday he would be gone from school.”
“Well . . . that’s just the way it was written. I can’t change the past.”
“But you Herr Haugen are a senior high-level manager at a huge multinational corporation . . . and you are going to a major business school . . . surely a sharp up-and-coming executive like you doesn’t write such vague communications . . . or is this what you do at Nokia . . . or learn at business school?”
“My wife typed the letter. I just signed it.”
Sohlberg wanted to smile. The father had finally opened the door that offered him a way to implicate or blame Agnes Haugen in the disappearance of his son.
“Herr Haugen . . . it’s incredible that you of all people signed such a vague note . . . a piece of nonsensical verbiage that resulted in so much confusion . . . thanks to that misleading note of yours the school was not able to react fast enough to your son’s disappearance. Thanks to your note the search for your son was delayed by more than six hours. How do you think that will look before a court considering your conviction and sentence?”
Silence.
“You also made verbal statements to the teacher that made her think that your son Karl was visiting the doctor on Friday June four instead of Friday June eleven. Then you switched your dates and statements and told the school and our investigators that you had always told the teacher that Karl would be at the doctor on the next Friday . . . June eleven.”
“I never spoke to the teacher before Friday June four. My wife handled all school matters for Karl.”
Sohlberg stared at Gunnar Haugen. Sohlberg was elated that the father had taken another step to implicate or blame Agnes Haugen in a felony crime. But now the time had arrived to change topics before Haugen could carefully think about Sohlberg’s questions and even more important Haugen’s own answers.
“Herr Haugen . . . children repeat whatever they hear their parents say at home. They are little tape recordings. Wouldn’t you agree Herr Haugen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You son repeated many interesting things at school about you and your wife. Did you know that?”
“He could’ve been repeating things he heard at his mother’s home up in Namsos.”
“So you do admit that children repeat what they hear at home.”
“You’re talking about a hypothetical . . . that Karl supposedly repeated what he might have heard at my house. So I offered you an alternative that’s reasonable. Anyway . . . this is all theory.”
“Actually it’s not Herr Haugen. Your son yelled ‘I hate you. I hate you.’ Now. . . where would he have heard that?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“But you do know Herr Haugen . . . you know but you just won’t tell me the truth . . . that’s part of your family’s many secrets ain’t it? . . . Never tell . . . just keep quiet and pretend to be happy . . . right?”
Silence. Sohlberg worried because he could again see and feel Gunnar Haugen literally withdrawing from the room in mind and soul if not body. Sohlberg moved quickly to offer another door to Gunnar Haugen. This door offered Gunnar Haugen an excuse for kidnaping or harming his son. Sohlberg shrugged and said:
“Herr Haugen . . . I know how people live with deep horrible secrets . . . then one day they just can’t go on and they go crazy and explode. You see . . . I know one of your secrets. . . .”
Silence.
“Your wife. I know all about her.”
Haugen’s eyes narrowed and then closed shut.
“Ja . . . I know all about her many many lies to trap you in a loveless marriage.”
Silence.
“I know about her lying to you about being born to a wealthy family.”
Silence.
“I know about her playing on your sympathy for those who are adopted like you.”
Silence.
“I know about her playing on your feelings about being a single father who needed a care-giver for his son . . . and who better than an elementary school teacher?”
Silence.
“I know about her pretending to want a career in education only to turn down a good job offer teaching at a school because she instead preferred your offer of marriage . . . which meant she no longer had to work for a living. I also know that she lied to you about not being materialistic when she has a long track record of using men to get material possessions.”
“I love my wife and she loves me.”
Sohlberg wondered if the statement was part of Gunnar Haugen’s natural instinct to deny the reality of his loveless marriage. Was Gunnar Haugen’s profession of love meant to protect Agnes Haugen? Or was it maybe meant to protect Gunnar Haugen by making his marriage appear to be that of a loving couple?
“Herr Haugen . . . what kind of woman tells lies about not being able to have children and then magically cranks out a baby that will keep you paying child support for a long long time if you get a divorce.”
Silence.
“I know about your wife pretending to like being a stay-at-home wife when . . . in fact . . . she’s likes to party around with other men.”
Silence.
“I know about the many men she has had sex with while you were here at Nokia working hard.”
“I . . . I love my wife and she loves me,” said a robot-like Gunnar Haugen.
“I know for a fact that your wife sent x-rated e-mails and nude pictures to one of your best high school friends who showed up to help search for your son.”
Silence.
“I also know that she sent text messages to one of her men friends and offered to pay him half of your life insurance proceeds if he’d erase you out of the picture.”
“She jokes around a lot.�
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“Why are you protecting this woman?” shouted Sohlberg who grew increasingly furious at Gunnar Haugen’s refusal to cast suspicion on his wife. “Is she blackmailing you?”
“She loves me.”
“She can’t blackmail you any more because we just arrested your brother for molesting a teenage girl . . . he told us about your grandfather molesting him and you at the barn in his farm near Hov.”
Sohlberg expected more silence and withdrawal. Instead he got an angry reaction from Gunnar Haugen who yelled:
“That never . . . never happened to me!”
“Why would your brother lie?” said Sohlberg who was amazed at how this man could live with so many painful secrets. “Why would a pedophile like your grandfather only molest your younger brother and leave you alone?”
Silence.
“Has your wife ever threatened to tell the police that you molested your son because your grandfather molested you and your brother?”
Silence.
“Is that your non-answer? . . . I’ve read one of her e-mails to one of her men friends . . . she wrote him that she was worried that you may’ve harmed Karl or kidnaped him because you probably molested Karl . . . she wrote that molestation victims tend to be molesters themselves.”
Silence and a blank stare.
“What would you say was Karl’s demeanor and behavior during the four weeks before he was kidnaped?”
“Normal.”
“Really? . . . Normal? . . . That directly contradicts what you and your wife told the school and the teacher . . . you told them that Karl was acting strangely . . . staring into space . . . distracted . . . and even angry.”
“I only repeated what my wife observed . . . she spent much more time with my son than I did. She was . . . is a professional . . . a school teacher trained to observe these problems.”
Sohlberg looked as if he had just swallowed a spoonful of lutefisk. Just the thought of the traditional Norwegian dish made Sohlberg feel like retching. He hated the gelatinous cod fish cooked with caustic lye and lots of boiling.
“Herr Haugen . . . you’re feeding me a lot of lies.” Sohlberg studied Gunnar Haugen’s stoic stone-face which meant that the engineer was either gullible in the extreme or a brilliant manipulator.
“I’m not lying to you. My wife carefully observed Karl. She knew what she was talking about when she said he was acting strange . . . having seizures.”
Sohlberg shouted:
“Is she a doctor? How would she know if he was suffering from seizures? . . . Don’t you know Herr Haugen . . . what your wife was doing behind your back when she went around telling people that Karl was acting strange?”
“No. What? You tell me!”
“She told everyone at school and the gym and all of her friends . . . and Karl’s mother . . . that Karl had begun behaving oddly . . . . weird when he started the second grade . . . that he was distracted . . . that Karl was staring off into space . . . that was her favorite quotes . . . that he seemed irritated or upset . . . she said all those were the typical symptoms of molestation.”
“I. . . .”
“Don’t you want to contradict the misleading lies and misinformation she’s planting about you?”
“I love my wife and she loves me.”
Sohlberg felt horrible about the amount of punishment he had dealt to Gunnar Haugen in the interview process. But Sohlberg had to get critical information out of the father. This was after all a cold case about a missing boy.
“Herr Haugen . . . we interviewed several people at the gym and they all told us that your wife complained about your coldness and lack of attention and the ugly ways that you criticized her weight gain after having your baby daughter.”
“Not true. I never said a word about her weight. She’s the one obsessed with her body and looks. She’s the one who made me pay for her implants. She’s the one who went overboard in training to become a champion bodybuilder.”
“She says these were all your ideas.”
Silence.
Haugen’s silence puzzled Sohlberg. Usually by this point any other man would have begun spilling a flood of negative information about his wife and her involvement in a little boy’s disappearance. But not Gunnar Haugen.
Sohlberg tried again. “She’s told friends that you’re a very controlling person . . . that you controlled her spending.”
“Her spending? Whose money is she spending? Mine. She was out of control spending all of my money. So ja . . . I controlled her spending my money. I plead guilty to that charge. Does that finally make you happy Chief Inspector? Do you think that you’re going to solve this case by dragging me through mud? All of this is nothing more than vile and idle gossip of some minor marital discord we’ve had . . . all marriages have their ups and downs. But I was . . . I am happy in our marriage”
“Perhaps. But not all up-and-down marriages have missing children. Do they?”
Silence.
“You and Agnes always painted a pretty picture of your happy marriage and home life to friends and families . . . and later to us. This is the first I’ve heard of your marriage with ups and downs. All of your social media postings on Facebook and Biip and elsewhere paint the picture of your family being a perfectly happy blended family.”
Gunnar Haugen coughed and was about to say something but he stopped himself.
“Herr Haugen! You claim you have a happy stable marriage but Agnes Haugen has sent dozens and dozens of e-mails and text messages to her family and friends about how she was fed up of taking care of Karl and that you refused to discipline him.”
“Maybe she did go overboard with controlling Karl . . . but she does that with everyone else . . . if Karl did not bring a green slip or note from school every day then she wanted me to punish him by locking him up in his room for the evening without any play time. She often refused to let him watch television or any movies even after I said he could. There was no room for error.”
Sohlberg felt sorry for Gunnar and Karl Haugen and anyone else who lived in a family with no room for error. A chill crept into Sohlberg’s hands which no amount of rubbing could warm up.
“After the birth of our daughter eighteen months ago my wife grew even more impatient with everyone and everything . . . even with the baby.”
“What about the baby?”
“She would get angry that our baby would wake up at all hours and not stop crying.”
“What else?”
“My wife started bombarding Karl’s mother and stepfather up in Namsos with several e-mails a day complaining about Karl and how difficult life was at our home with the baby . . . of course she did the same with Karl’s teacher . . . sending her e-mails complaining almost every day about Karl and me and the baby . . . and even her first son Thor who never gave us any problems when he lived with us.”
“Whose idea was it to kick Thor out of your house?”
“Not mine. I came back from a business trip to Helsinki and . . . boom! . . . I find out she sent Thor to live with her parents even though Thor and I were getting along very well.”
“Would Thor agree with that statement?”
“Ja. Call him up right now. Anyway . . . I complained to her about her sudden and disruptive action but what can I do? . . . He’s not my son. It was her idea to kick him out and send him to live with her parents . . . she was fed up with him not obeying her and talking back at her all the time. She and Thor . . . who’s now fourteen . . . they got into awful fights . . . her postpartum depression led to her into big fights with Thor all the time . . . as all parents do with teenagers.”
“Your son Karl went missing less than two weeks after Thor left your home.”
“So? . . . That’s just a coincidence.”
“Really Herr Haugen . . . don’t you tie the two events together? You don’t think your wife did something to your son Karl in retaliation for you kicking her son Thor out of your home?”
“No.”
Sohlberg glan
ced at Gunnar Haugen as if saying “Are you that naive or stupid?”
“Look Inspector . . . my wife has postpartum depression. That’s the reality we’ve had to live with.”
“What doctor diagnosed her with postpartum depression?”
“I . . . I don’t think she mentioned . . . but it’s common knowledge that many women get severely depressed after delivering their baby. She told me she has postpartum depression. Wouldn’t she know best what she has?”