Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries) (32 page)

“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 glanced 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?”

“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?”

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?”

Sohlberg felt like jumping across the table and slapping Gunnar Haugen. But 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 look after 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 that Karl Haugen’s lunch box had been 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 article 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?”

“Yes. 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— ”