Death on Pilot Hill (An Inspector Harald Sohlberg Mystery)

by Jens Amundsen

  “She’s not a doctor . . . is she?”

  “No.”

  “On the other hand maybe she does know what’s best if she’s setting up an insanity defense.”

  “What? . . . Why would she want an insanity defense?”

  “So she can walk away scot-free from whatever crimes she committed against your son.”

  “No!” said Gunnar Haugen who slumped into his seat.

  “Herr Haugen . . . I need you to help us . . . the investigation uncovered irrefutable facts that point to you or your wife or both of you taking Karl that Friday.”

  “You have no grounds to say that.”

  “Oh . . . but I do . . . you have an unhappy marriage filled with resentments and betrayals.”

  Sohlberg was not surprised that Gunnar Haugen refused to admit that he had been spying on his wife’s electronic communications. What surprised him profoundly was Gunnar Haugen’s next statement.

  “Inspector . . . you’re making my marriage appear to be what it’s not. We were managing our relationship and working through all our issues in a positive manner.”

  “Herr Haugen . . . you’re just giving me a lot of phony corporate doubletalk . . . managing the relationship . . . working through issues in a positive manner. . . you do realize . . . I hope . . . that we’re on the same planet . . . planet Earth . . . we’re talking about a deeply troubled marriage with infidelity and resentments and lies . . . we’re not talking about some employee’s performance review for the year.”

  “Sir! Everything was fine in our marriage until some sick perverted stranger took our little boy. Why aren’t you out looking for that criminal huh?”

  Sohlberg almost sneered when he noticed that Gunnar Haugen was returning to his stoic martyr look and possibly withdrawing or shutting down for good.

  “Chief Inspector . . . why are you harassing me . . . saying all these ugly things about our good marriage?”

  At first Sohlberg felt like jumping across the table and slapping Gunnar Haugen. Sohlberg then realized with immense sadness that at some level Gunnar Haugen actually believed that he had a good marriage to Agnes Haugen and that his wife loved his son and that somehow everything would be alright if he repeated often enough the Big Business and Big Government mantra of working through issues in a positive manner.

  “Herr Haugen . . . I’m saying all these ugly things about your so-called good marriage because I know that you’ve been spying on your wife . . . I know that you are very well aware of her many betrayals and deceptions. I . . . like you . . . know everything that she’s been doing behind your back.”

  Sohlberg’s phone buzzed. Before leaving the room he said, “Constable here will keep a look on you and make sure you don’t escape or injure yourself or try to call anyone.”

  The call from headquarters stunned Sohlberg. The police had found at the remote farm of Gunnar Haugen’s grandfather a large barrel for the disposal of acid waste. Even more stunning was the discovery of Karl Haugen’s lunch box buried under the barn. Fifteen minutes later Sohlberg walked into the conference room and said:

  “Herr Haugen . . . stand up please so that we can handcuff you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re under arrest for the kidnaping and murder of your son.”

  Chapter 13/Tretten

  INVESTIGATION FOLLOW-UP,

  EVENING OF 1 YEAR AND 25 DAYS

  AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4

  Two hours after delivering Gunnar Haugen into booking Constable Wangelin placed five hurried phone calls to verify her information before she walked into Sohlberg’s office and announced:

  “I confirmed from the lab that Agnes Haugen made several interesting phone calls. We need to discuss the calls. Also . . . Constable Rhode just called me. . . .”

  “What about this Constable Rhode?”

  “He was one of the first investigators at the scene of the crime on the day of Karl’s disappearance. He’s been on vacation . . . just got my message about whether he remembered anything unusual in the case . . . and did he ever.”

  “Great . . . give it to me.”

  “First he interviewed this cranky old coot who lives near the school.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “At a dead end . . . where Orreveien ends in a circle. That location is less than a half mile from Karl’s school. The old man hates people who come down his street to drink and party. So he writes down the day and time of the event and the make and color of the vehicle whenever he sees anyone parked on the dead end . . . and if he’s able to he uses his binoculars . . . he looks through them and writes down as much of the license plates as he can see from his home.”

  “Very good . . . sounds promising.”

  “Sometimes he can see all the letters and numbers on the license plates or a little or nothing . . . based on how and where the cars are parked and the position of the sun and the shadows from the nearby trees.”

  “Very good. This is what we’ve needed to help solve this case.”

  “Listen to this . . . during the two week period before Karl disappeared . . . the old man twice saw a green Volvo SUV . . . the XC90 model . . . park at the dead end on Orreveien. The driver . . . a short pudgy woman with short curly light brown hair in her early forties got out of the car and went into the forest all alone for about twenty-five minutes. The old man was able to read the first two letters and numbers of the license plate . . . and. . . .”

  “And?”

  “And those partial plates match an Oslo vehicle that matches his description of the car. I looked up the owner’s name and . . . lo and behold . . . Danica Knutsen turns out to be a bodybuilding friend of Agnes Haugen.”

  “So. . . .”

  “It turns out that this Danica Knutsen has no reason for being on that dead end . . . she lives in Togrenda . . . a suburb off the E-Six Highway.”

  “Where about . . . more or less?”

  “Fifteen miles south of where you live.”

  “So she does not even live close to Holmenkollen.”

  “That’s right Chief Inspector . . . and she does not have any children at Karl’s school.”

  “None?”

  “None. She has no priors. Never married. But I did find a newspaper Arcticle on her. . . . She sued a drug company a few years ago and won a substantial judgment in the United States against a California drug company because she can’t have children . . . seems she fried both of her ovaries with all of the steroids that she took beginning in high school and kept taking until she turned forty.

  “I did more research and found out that within a year of getting her lawsuit award she had spent all of it and fallen into debt . . . she then got a job as a secretary at a law firm but was fired a year later . . . also she’s known for promoting organic farming.”

  “Anything else on her?”

  “No. That’s it for now.”

  “Find out more about her . . . find out exactly what she did the month before and the month after Karl Haugen disappeared. Find out . . . hour by hour . . . what she did and where she went on the day that Karl vanished.”

  “There’s more I need to tell you about the old man.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “On the day that Karl disappeared he saw . . . from nine in the morning to nine-thirty . . . and from three-fifteen to three-thirty . . . a woman drive a large white vehicle into the dead end . . . his description of the vehicle matches the description of the Toyota pickup truck owned by Karl’s father.”

  “Did he get the license plates?”

  “No . . . the car was parked in such a way as to make it impossible for him to see the plates with his binoculars. He said it was almost as if the driver knew the old man was watching from his vantage point.”

  “Who did he see in the car . . . a man and a woman . . . was there a passenger . . . maybe a little boy?”

  “He didn’t see a child that afternoon but then again the child may’ve been too low inside the truck to be seen and the
child could’ve come out the passenger side door which the old man could not see from his vantage point . . . the woman had long hair in a ponytail and she wore a cap and sunglasses . . . he again said it was almost as if the driver was doing everything possible to avoid being identified.”

  “You said he didn’t see a child that afternoon . . . when did he next see the vehicle?”

  “Are you ready for this Chief? . . . He saw the white pickup at two in the morning of the following day.”

  “What?”

  “Ja. The same pickup parked at the dead end . . . the driver again left the engine running for almost half an hour . . . from two to about two-thirty that morning. Now . . . the interesting thing is that one of his neighbors . . . a young mother with a baby saw the same white pickup in the afternoon and again at two in the morning. That night she got a creepy feeling with the pickup truck being there again at two in the morning so she let her dogs loose . . . they went barking down the street . . . a few minutes later the pickup left in a hurry . . . speeding at over fifty miles-per-hour up the street.”

  “So the old man’s not inventing this. Did the old man or young mother see the driver or any passengers the second time at two in the morning?”

  “No Chief . . . the tree shadows fell right over that spot.”

  “Too bad. These two incidents at the dead end on Orreveien confirm our theory that the entire kidnaping was carefully planned down to the last detail.”

  “Did you notice something interesting Chief? . . . It’s Agnes Haugen who drives her husband’s pickup on the day Karl vanishes.”

  “I want this Danica Knutsen put under round-the-clock surveillance. The same goes for the stepmother Agnes Haugen. I want to know exactly what these two women are up to because they’ll soon find out that Gunnar Haugen has been arrested in the kidnaping of his son. So please focus on putting together a minute-by-minute timeline showing the whereabouts of both women that day.”

  “I’ll go and look at the binders. I think someone in the force interviewed Danica Knutsen because she repeatedly kept showing up at the Haugen home during the days after the kidnaping. Anything else?”

  “No . . . but the timeline is urgent. Haugen will be out of jail in two days or less. We have forty-eight hours or less to prepare for our interrogation of Agnes Haugen and her friend Danica Knutsen. Get as many people as you need to help you. If you have to— ”

  “I know Chief . . . if I have to I’ll work on it all night long.”

  “Thank you. Please call me anytime as soon as you finish. . . . even if that’s at four in the morning.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ja. I doubt if I’ll be getting much sleep anyway . . . the case is always on mind.”

  Sohlberg spent the next two days at home. Fru Sohlberg knew better than to engage in any conversation with her husband. He spent most of his time reading binders on the case down at the guest cottage by the beach. Their conversations consisted mostly of him saying “Ja . . . of course dear. . . .” and “Oh?”

  A few months later Sohlberg found out that Fru Sohlberg had wisely cancelled her parents’ visit because she knew that they’d probably feel ignored if not slightly insulted by her husband’s mental and physical absence during the investigation.

  Chapter 14/Fjorten

  INTERROGATION OF AGNES HAUGEN,

  MORNING OF 1 YEAR AND 28 DAYS

  AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4

  A media firestorm broke out during the two days after the arrest of Gunnar Haugen. The headlines said it all: IS IT MURDER? ARRESTED FATHER WILL NOT SPEAK ON KARL HAUGEN CASE SAYS DEFENSE LAWYER.

  Most of the tram’s passengers in the 7:15 AM commute on Line 18 into downtown Oslo were reading newspapers with the latest about the Karl Haugen case. Those who were not reading about the arrest managed to steal a glance at the man who got on the tram and walked straight into a pole near the compartment’s middle doors. He bounced off the pole and kept on walking as if in a trance.

  “Drunk at this hour in the morning,” said an elderly woman loudly. “Imagine that at his age.”

  But the man was not drunk. It was Sohlberg lost in thought and oblivious to his surroundings. He always got that way at the end of every investigation when all the loose ends had to be tied down and fully explained. Sohlberg was legendary for his absent-mindedness when thinking about how to wrap up an investigation.

  One question after the other swirled in Sohlberg’s mind.

  How much did Gunnar Haugen know about the facts leading to his son’s kidnaping?

  How much did the man know about the kidnaping itself?

  Why did Karl’s father refuse to make any statements against his wife Agnes Haugen with respect to the disappearance of his son?

  Most other parents would have cooperated with the police when confronted with evidence that their spouse is likely to be involved in a crime against a stepchild. But not Gunnar Haugen.

  Why didn’t Gunnar Haugen implicate Agnes Haugen after he was arrested and given plenty of chances to finger her as the main suspect in his son’s disappearance?

  Did the father and stepmother act together in the boy’s disappearance?

  Was one of them perhaps an after-the-fact accessory?

  Why did Gunnar Haugen have an acid disposal barrel that was more the right size for a large adult body than for a small child’s body?

  Sohlberg was jolted back into reality when the tram braked to a complete stop at the Oslo Sentralstasjon or Central S Station. He stepped out into downtown Oslo’s loveliest boulevard the Karl Johans gate and walked towards its northern end. Tree leaves shimmered in the gentle end-of-summer sunlight. Strollers cast wary looks at the man with a pinched face and narrow eyes and an enormous flopping raincoat. His mind churned over the case facts. He tried to connect all the facts together to make sense of the kidnaping of Karl Haugen.

  How could someone as smart and educated as Gunnar Haugen have made so many obvious and dumb mistakes in marrying and staying married to Agnes Haugen?

  Sohlberg was surprised at the immense pity he felt for Gunnar Haugen. The man reminded him of so many others who mistakenly think that their education and their income and their titles and their success outside the home would render them immune to failure inside the home.

  What wise man had once said, No success outside the home can compensate for failure in the home?

  Was it David O. McKay from Utah?

  Sohlberg wondered if the man had instead perhaps said, No other success can compensate for failure in the home.

  Regardless of the exact words the underlying thought bothered Sohlberg.

  Had he been too quick to seek success at the expense of his first wife Karoline?

  Sohlberg remembered the many many evenings and nights and weekends and holidays that he had abandoned Karoline to stay working at the law firm. He then remembered how often he had also abandoned Emma and their now-dead son when he investigated crimes.

  After bumping into a group of tourists Sohlberg looked up and was shocked to see Det kongelige slott or the Royal Palace up on the hill. Sohlberg muttered a curse when he realized that he had missed his turn and was now far off course. Even more embarrassing he got lost in thought again and took several wrong turns as he tried to find his way back to the police offices at 12 Hammersborggata.

  The increasingly agitated Sohlberg walked up and down the narrow and odd-angled and confusing streets for almost 30 minutes before someone kindly pointed him to the corner of Hammersborggata and Torggata.

  As soon as he got out of the elevator the receptionist pointed Sohlberg to Ivar Thorsen’s office.

  Commissioner Thorsen sat behind his desk smug and preening. He said in the most patronizing way possible:

  “Sohlberg you’ve done good. An arrest so soon! Excellent. Excellent. I knew you’d pull the proverbial rabbit out of the old hat. Good job. Good job.”

  “Not so fast.”

  “What? . . . Oh you’re always so . . . so . . . how sha
ll I say it? . . . Nitpicky? . . . Crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s. Alright. Go ahead. You deserve it in this case. Besides . . . we’d like to get a rock solid conviction on the father.”

  “Look Thorsen . . . we may have found bottles of acid . . . and a large barrel to store acid waste at the barn . . . all plastered with Gunnar Haugen’s fingerprints. But that doesn’t prove by a long shot that Gunnar Haugen kidnaped or killed his own son. Why would he need such a large barrel for such a little boy?”

  “Well. . . .”