Sohlberg and the White Death (28 page)

“I get it.”

“Geologists all over the world are recording these chemical fingerprints and putting them in computer databases. Arches and loops and whorls and scars make every human fingerprint different . . . the same goes for the chemical fingerprinting of soils and rocks. Instead of arches and loops and whorls the geochemsists use isotopes. Chief Inspector . . . do you know what an isotope is?”

“Kind of.”

“Good. Good. . . . Isotopes are varieties of a particular chemical element. Do you have siblings?”

“Yes,” said Skrautvol. “A brother and a sister.”

“That’s what isotopes are. Brothers and sisters of the same family. Each of you is a slight variation of each other.”

“Only as far as the D.N.A. goes.”

“Ah yes. I understand. It always amazes me how children who grew up in the same family can be so different. Some turn out to be decent and productive and well-balanced adults. Others in the same family turn out to be lazy . . . nasty . . . dysfunctional.”

Skrautvol smiled. “My family.”

“It happens. As I was saying . . . isotopes are brothers and sisters of a specific element like oxygen or carbon or lead . . . the only difference for isotopes is the number of neutrons. Get it?”

“Yes. I follow you.”

“Excellent. Over the decades geochemists have focused on isotopes of elements like strontium and oxygen and carbon and lead that accumulate in human tissue . . . because we literally are what we eat and drink . . . our food and water incorporates the elements found in rocks and soils . . . we absorb those elements and they tell us with scientific certainty where a person was born and where a person has lived. Got it?”

“I am a collection of isotopes.”

Jørgensen laughed. “I’ll have to put that on a t-shirt someday.”

“I’ll take a ten percent royalty please.”

“I’m not greedy. Anyway . . . I asked for help on this geo-referencing from Professor Jurgen Mienert of the Geology Department at the University of Tromsø . . . he brought in Professor Rune Selbekk of the Department of GeoSciences at the University of Oslo. Their assistance was critical.”

“Lots of brainpower. Good.”

“Brainpower always helps . . . doesn’t it? . . . Basic to a homicide investigation if you ask me. You didn’t ask so let’s move on. I sent samples of hair roots and bone and tooth enamel from each of the nine victims to the professors. They ground them up . . . treated them with markers and put them on mass spectrometers which are very sensitive . . . these instruments detect signatures . . . tiny differences in isotope concentrations in hair roots and bone and tooth enamel. These tiny differences perfectly match the differences in the rocks and soils of every region throughout the world.

“So we can tell you . . . and a court . . . with great certainty
where
a person was born and
where
a person has lived based on the specific type of strontium isotopes in the person’s body. . . . The same goes for oxygen isotopes and carbon isotopes and lead isotopes that accumulate in hair roots and bone and tooth enamel. Also . . . as for the strontium I mean the naturally occurring type and not the super-toxic radioactive type that’s from man-made nuclear material.”

“I’m very impressed.”

“Ain’t it cool?” Jørgensen’s face beamed with excitement.

Skrautvol chuckled inwardly over the doctor’s slang and enthusiasm. She had expected a boring and stuffy know-it-all doctor and medical examiner specially from someone at age 68 with his credentials and reputation.

~ ~ ~

Jørgensen tapped the manila folder he had brought with him. He pushed it towards Skrautvol and said:

“Alright. Here are the results for isotope geo-referencing. . . .

“Victims One and Two . . . the muscular white men in their late twenties . . . early thirties . . . with Russian prison tattoos. These two men were definitely born in the Ukraine. They might be ethnic Russian or ethnic Ukrainian . . . that we don’t know. But we do know that they came from Ukraine and this we know as an absolute fact because the strontium in their bodies was radioactive contaminated . . . from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in nineteen eighty-six. We measured the half-life of the strontium in their bodies and it indicated that they had to have lived very close to the Chernobyl reactor as children. We also know that the two men lived in Moscow Russia during the past ten or so years.”

“Wow. This geo-referencing is incredible.”

“Victim Three . . . the oldest white male . . . in his late sixties was born in or near Budapest Hungary where he also grew up . . . he lived for a decade or two in southern California or northern Mexico . . . and decades more in or around Moscow.

“Victims Four and Five . . . white males in their forties or fifties . . . one man was born and raised in Krasnodar Russia . . . near the Black Sea. We know this because of the soils in that area and the heavier oxygen isotopes from living near a large body of sea water. The other man . . . with the stainless steel teeth . . . his remaining back teeth indicate that he was born and raised about one hundred miles northwest of Minsk in the old Soviet Republic of Belarus. . . . Both men lived in Moscow Russia the past couple of years . . . say ten or more years.”

“Victims Six and Seven . . . white males whose faces were hacked off . . . in their late twenties . . . the ones with gunshots to their heads . . . they were born and raised in Troms County . . . they lived here their entire lives. . . . They’re not from Finland as I first thought when I did their autopsy and found pieces of undigested
pulla
bread in the esophagus.”

Skrautvol clapped her hands loudly. “Well! . . . That’s a big break in the case. We can now focus our efforts locally . . . around Tromsø . . . so we can identify the two Norwegians.”

“Victims Eight and Nine . . . the Asian male in his forties and Asian female in her thirties. They are North Koreans . . . born and raised in North Korea. They lived all of their adult lives in North Korea and nowhere else.”

“
North
Koreans?”

“Without a doubt. I first suspected they were North Koreans because they are much smaller for their age and sex than South Koreans. In fact they had all the signs of low calorie diets as adults and mild childhood malnutrition . . .
mild
malnutrition mind you . . . not severe . . . which means that they’re most likely born as children of Communist Party officials in the middle or higher levels . . . and that they later lived as middle or lower level party officials as adults. In other words they had enough to eat . . . barely but enough . . . unlike the majority of their fellow countrymen who are starving in that lunatic hell-hole.”

“You’re sure that they’re not South Korean or Chinese or Japanese or from somewhere else?”

“Absolutely. The had
zero
lead . . . that’s very unusual because most people have some lead in their system.”

“From lead-based paints?”

“No. Lead gets inside human beings who are around cars . . . this started when lead became a common gasoline additive . . . these two victims also had zero amounts of a family of chemicals known as perfluorooctanoic acid or P.F.O.A. And that was also extremely unusual.”

“What’s that P.F.O.A. stuff?”

“A key ingredient in teflon. Like lead it has poisoned almost everyone in the civilized world. It’s being banned or drastically reduced in most Western countries . . . but it’s too late . . . it’s everywhere . . . it’s even been found in aborigines in Australia. Only the most remote and backward regions of the planet are not polluted with P.F.O.A. and North Korea is one of those places.”

“North Korea . . . you’re that sure.”

“Yes. The clincher is that we found . . . in the carbon levels of the hair root samples . . . much higher than expected levels of corn protein. That’s unusual for Asians. The North Korean dictator . . . Kim Jong-il . . . was well known for forcing his people to eat more corn and less rice. My research indicates that the dictator’s little monster . . . Kim Jong-un . . . is also forcing corn on his subjects.”

“Wow,” said Skrautvol.

“One last matter. The woman was raped and sodomized. I took the appropriate swabs. Her attackers? . . . The two young men with Russian prison tattoos. . . . Victims One and Two.”

“That adds another cruel twist to a tragic case.”

“Yes. . . . So there you have it Chief Inspector. . . . It’s all in the folder. I hope this helps.”

“I can’t begin to tell you.” Skrautvol slipped her hands over the cigarette cases in her pant pockets. She desperately yearned for a smoke. She could not believe her good luck over how accurate isotope forensics had become during the past few years.

~ ~ ~

The doctor got up to leave. He could tell from her distant eyes that she was engrossed in her thoughts and one step closer to solving the nine murders. Jørgensen was greatly pleased. He and his team had done their jobs well and set the wheels of justice moving in the right direction.

Jørgensen closely studied Skrautvol. During the past 40 years he had met his share of lazy knaves and incompetent fools posing as detectives. Experience and instinct told him that the generously-sized detective was hard-working, intelligent, and decent—the perfect combination for a homicide detective. Looks and weight be damned. The information was in good hands. His job was done.

“Thank you,” she belatedly yelled out.

But he was already gone.

Chapter 19/Nitten

TROMSØ, NORWAY: JULY 30, OR

THREE MONTHS AND 18 DAYS

AFTER THE DAY

During the past seven days Constable Rasch had methodically contacted six hundred individuals who lived in and around Hansnes. Many of them were hard to find because they worked in Tromsø most of the day. Or they lived in the city and kept a house out in the boondocks of Hansnes for weekends and vacations.

Rasch had perfected a subtle little speech that was designed to draw out information without giving away the fact that nine individuals had been gruesomely murdered in Troms County. The constable had to keep quiet about the murders. He had heard many subtle and not so subtle reminders that the bigwigs down in Oslo did not want anyone to question Norway’s facade as a perfect socialist paradise with negligible crime. And so he fished around with his lure.

“
I’m gathering background information on anyone you might know who uses or leases their airplane or boat to transport a group of folks in or out of Troms County . . . say nine or ten people . . . maybe tourists . . . foreigners. Do you know anyone like that? . . . Or know anyone who might know people like that?
”

Three names had cropped up. One was a boat captain who turned out to be recovering in Tromsø at the University Hospital of Northern Norway from a brain aneurysm during the time of the nine murders. The second person of interest was an airplane pilot who was flying an air ambulance in Sweden. The last person had undergone a sex change operation and he was now a she who owned a tony boutique on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles California. Rasch had confirmed the whereabouts of these individuals and none of them could have transported or murdered any of the victims.

Rasch also visited business owners and fishermen throughout Ringvassøy Island. That was no easy task since Ringvassøya’s 254 square miles make it Norway’s sixth largest island. Many a visit required the constable to drive on rough unpaved roads. Only one person went out of his way to avoid him—Per Moen. Door knocks and phone calls and e-mails had all been ignored.

Early that morning the constable drove the 40 miles up north to Hansnes. Rasch was on his way further north when he caught sight of Moen’s delivery van at the pumps of the Esso gasoline station. He swerved into the parking lot and walked into the station. Moen couldn’t leave. He had no choice. He was waiting in line to pay.

“Per! . . . I’ve been looking for you. Let’s talk.”

Moen’s face darkened. “I have nothing more to say. What I want is to get paid for the damages to my property. Your forensics guys ripped up my land and shack.”

“Have you turned in the forms?”

“Too many of them.”

“Maybe I can speed things up.”

“I doubt it,” said Moen while he paid the teller. “Rasch . . . tell your stupid bosses that they’re going to hear from my lawyer if I don’t get paid. Now . . . unlike you . . . I’m busy working hard for a living and paying taxes wasted by clowns. So goodbye!”

A bemused Rasch watched Moen storm out of the gas station and almost crash the delivery van into a light pole.

The harder they hide the more they have to hide.

The constable got back on the road and continued north around the island. He wanted to catch a few homeowners whom he had missed on his last trip to the very end of Farm Road Fv304. The gravel road came to an abrupt halt at the southern end of a broad inlet. Rasch always got dizzy in this place because of the peculiar and disorienting angles of the mountains on both sides of the little fjord. On the west side of the inlet a mountain range of purple rock rose at sharp angles while on the east a procession of low and grass-covered mountains gently sloped toward the water.