Songbird (Daniel Trokics Series Book 3) Page 4

  “How did her apartment look then?”

  “What do you mean? It looked normal. Maybe a little bit messy.”

  “Okay. But you were lovers; didn’t you normally see each other more often?”

  “Normally, we did, but she was feeling so bad. Hasn’t that sunk in with you guys yet?”

  “But why weren’t you more persistent, break her door down? I would have.” That was a bald-faced lie; Trokic had never felt that strongly about any woman. “Were you two having problems? I think it’s strange you weren’t with her more. Weren’t you worried about her?”

  “Of course, I was worried about her! But she didn’t want to see me. I asked her several times.”

  “And what about yesterday evening?” Taurup said. “What were you doing?”

  A glint appeared in Isaksen’s eye. “You would have to ask me again, I suppose, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, we would.”

  “I had dinner at Substans on Frederiksgade. A business dinner.”

  “Did you at any time have any contact with Maja?”

  He shook his head. “I tried to call her just before dinner, but she didn’t answer. Later, I went home and fell asleep; I’m afraid I was a bit drunk.”

  Isaksen seemed surprisingly ignorant of what his girlfriend had been doing, given that they were planning on living together. Trokic sensed that this real estate man was mostly interested in himself. And that the relationship might not have been particularly important to him.

  “When did you get home?” Taurup asked.

  “I don’t remember exactly. Maybe around eleven.”

  Trokic sighed. “It’s unfortunate you can’t account for your whereabouts at a time when she might still have been alive. Very unfortunate.”

  “I was asleep, for chrissake!” His eyes darted back and forth between the two detectives.

  “So you say,” Trokic said. “But you know what we think is a bigger problem? You live on Park Allé, which is close to Town Hall Park. Remarkably close, in fact. She could have jumped from your apartment, and you didn’t want your name in the papers.”

  Taurup broke in. “Or. You might’ve been jealous or pissed off about her kicking you out of her life. Enough to kill her. Bottom line is, you don’t have an alibi for that late evening and night.”

  “Christ, I don’t believe this! I didn’t kill her—why would anyone want to kill her?”

  “Take it easy: we just have to look at every possibility,” Trokic said.

  “If you really want suspects, check out where she worked, Transit. I even had a suspicion she was seeing someone from there. Though I can’t see why she’d hang around with those losers.”

  “Okay,” Trokic said. “But you don’t know who that might be?”

  “No. I just had the feeling. Like I said, she had her secrets, like sometimes she got home later than she said she would.”

  “We’ll look into that,” Trokic said. “You own a chain of real estate businesses around here, I understand?”

  “Yes. I started Mansion eight years ago. Most of our business involves larger houses. Mansions, you could say. The first few years were incredible, but lately… Well, it’s no secret, business isn’t good.”

  “What does it mean for your chain?” Trokic said. “Just out of curiosity.”

  “We’re getting by. Our equity is sound. Probably better than most. And we’ve picked up quite a bit of business from competitors gone bankrupt.”

  Trokic thought about an article he’d read, describing the threat to the ecological balance in southern France. An American bullfrog with a leg span of up to a half meter had inadvertently been introduced into France from the States about fifty years ago. It had no natural enemies, and now it practically had a stranglehold on every waterhole in the region. Snipers equipped with rifles with silencers were necessary to pick off the ferocious Yankee monsters. Isaksen reminded Trokic of the bullfrogs.

  The real estate man seemed to read Trokic’s mind. “That’s business. The big fish eat the little fish, right on down the food chain.”

  He continued with a short lecture about bonds and currency rates that was incomprehensible to mortal man. Which annoyed Trokic.

  “What about Maja? Did she have anything to do with your business?”

  “Of course not. She was very interested, though; she followed what went on.”

  “I think that’s about it.” Trokic was disappointed; he felt they’d gotten very little useful out of him. “But don’t wander off too far. I’m sure we’ll have more questions, and I don’t want to have to look for you in Timbuktu.”

  Isaksen stared straight ahead and shivered, as if a cold wind had just blown through the room. “The last time we were together, she had the worst nightmare. Yelled out in her sleep. It was scary, in fact. She almost couldn’t breathe, started babbling about things I couldn’t understand. Like someone was after her. And suddenly she sat up in bed and screamed something about wild horses and a dark room. And her eyes turned black, like she was seeing something way far away in another world that terrified her.”

  Isaksen’s face was ashen now.

  A few moments later, Trokic said, “The first results from Forensics will be coming in soon. And we’re going to check your apartment and courtyard; you can count on that.”

  He pulled out a form. “If you give us permission to search the premises by signing here, everything will go a little bit faster.”

  Isaksen peered suspiciously at the paper, but then he found a pen and signed.

  “Thanks. Now you can hope we don’t find anything that implicates you.”

  Chapter Seven

  He stared down at the carnage just below the front door of his house. Three mice and a bird had been executed by his Norwegian forest cat, Pjuske, and laid to rest on the doormat. It wasn’t what he needed to see so late in the evening. He sighed, then he unlocked the door and went inside to find a sack for the funeral.

  The sounds of spring had disappeared. Lawnmowers, grass trimmers, children playing—all were gone, as the fumes of freshly-painted rafters and carports rose into the atmosphere.

  He’d lived in the house over thirteen years. At first, he’d rented, then later he bought it. A small, two-room house with a brown bathroom, shabby kitchen, scratched-up wood floors, and grayish-green walls. Up until now, he’d been fine with it all, but he knew that in others’ eyes it definitely needed some TLC. He just hadn’t pulled himself together to do something about it. The truth was, he hated changes in his surroundings. And anyway, he was having enough trouble with ants. Last year, the ant air force in the kitchen had been a nightmare, especially because of its formidable defense against all chemical warfare.

  The living room was sparsely furnished with a few older pieces, a bookcase with paperbacks, and a few too many lamps. New ones appeared constantly, as if by magic. The latest addition was a special apparatus that could send out light in every shade of the rainbow by pressing a button on a remote. You could also set it for any one specific color, depending on your mood—the choice being pointless in Trokic’s case because it always ended up on dark green.

  He stabbed two meatballs in the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of burgundy from his wine rack. After chugging his first glass, he walked into the living room with the bottle and wineglass and sat down with the first reports of the day. His homicidal maniac of a cat was too busy sleeping on the sofa to acknowledge his arrival.

  Two officers had checked the information on Maja and her family. Her father had for many years been the manager of their cannery, and her mother had been his closest assistant. The report gave a detailed account of the relationships in the rest of the family, which was unusually boring and almost as long as an Icelandic saga.

  He laid it aside and started in on the next report. An interview with two students at Maja’s music school who had shown up at headquarters. Apparently, no one at the school had been close to her. It was the same old story; Maja had been reserved, but when there was
something she wanted, she’d been relentless. For quite some time, she’d skipped most classes, and she hadn’t shown up at all the past few weeks. A stubborn bout of the flu, she’d claimed. When she had shown up earlier that month, she’d been unusually brooding and distant.

  New report. Initial interview with the victim’s boyfriend. Nothing new there. He tossed it aside and thought about their own interview with Isaksen. They’d have another chat with him when things had settled down; he was probably the person with the most insight into Maja’s world, and he hadn’t told them much at all. Also, the more interviews with a suspect, the more likely it was to find holes in their story.

  He poured another glass of wine and reached for the next report, but his phone on the table discreetly interrupted him.

  “Agersund here.”

  Agersund, the stocky man with a gray crew cut whom they hadn’t seen at headquarters for several weeks. Trokic’s boss since 1998. For better and worse. He was amiable enough, with a sense of humor that at least most of the officers in the department appreciated, but he was also a disciplinarian of the first order, from a time when the police leadership was absolutist. Over the years, he’d tried to keep Trokic on a short leash, but he’d had only limited success.

  “So, you’re out of your coma now?” Trokic felt around in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He pulled an ashtray over, lit his cigarette, and watched the thin trail of smoke rise.

  “Only long enough to hear how everything’s going. I miss the entertainment, sitting on my throne, watching all you idiots screw everything up.”

  Trokic chuckled and took a drag on his cigarette. Then he gave his boss a lengthy description of the day’s events. “All in all, it’s a strange case. There’s not much more to say until we hear from Forensics.”

  “Jesus,” Agersund said. “Sounds bad, her apartment, the nightmares about evil animals. What does our pathologist have to say?”

  “There’s quite a bit that points to suicide. Bach wasn’t sure, though. Right now, it’s up in the air. We can’t even make an educated guess.”

  “Um hmm. Do you think you can take over for me?”

  Trokic stubbed out his cigarette. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s going to be a while before I’m back. Oh, hell, I might as well come right out and say it; these idiots have found a malignant tumor in my prostate. Apparently, that’s why I’ve been pissing blood and had all these bladder infections the past year.”

  Trokic sat in silence as his boss’s words slowly hit him. Cancer. The invisible enemy. Agersund had been his mentor the past ten years, and it was practically unthinkable that anything was seriously wrong with him. Through the phone he heard the soft tones of one of the female country singers Agersund liked.

  “How bad is it?” Trokic asked after settling himself. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. And suddenly, he realized he actually might care a little bit about the old fool.

  “It hasn’t spread; thank God for that. They say my chances are good. I’ve been in for tests all week. But I’m starting radiation therapy and some sort of anti-hormonal treatment. It’s just going to take time.”

  “I’ll handle things,” Trokic said, though he wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea. At all. “Until you come back.”

  He thought about Agersund’s boys, two teenagers he’d gotten to know a bit. No doubt they feared for their father’s life, and he felt sorry for them.

  Several moments passed before Agersund spoke. “In fact, I’d like for you to take over permanently. This is going to be a long haul, and I can’t know when I’ll be back. And when I do, it won’t be as head of Homicide. I’ll talk to the higher powers about this.”

  “I…don’t know about this…” Trokic felt like a fish caught in a net, twisting and squirming to get out.

  “Of course, you do. I don’t have anyone else who can handle things, and anyway you’re too old for a new boss. I know you. You’d hate someone coming in and pushing you around. You’re just going to have to do it yourself.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Take over for now, temporarily. That way you can think it over. And act like a decent human being; otherwise, I’ll have to come in and straighten your ass out.”

  Trokic woke with a start on the sofa and sat up. He was sweaty and freezing too. Maja’s dreams had set off his own nightmare. He’d been trapped in a boat under a charcoal sky; the clouds were like bulging trash bags moving along on an assembly line. It had smelled like moldy earth, like something rotten. Then it had turned dark, and the boat was actually a coffin. He heard gnawing rabbits outside, their teeth sharp as ice picks.

  Night had fallen, and through the window, he glimpsed Saturn inside Leo. He’d fallen asleep right after hanging up. Though he was groggy, he walked out on the porch and lit a cigarette. He’d had the same dream many times, a leftover from his time in Croatia. He’d been driving back to Zagreb and had run out of gas. And there it was—the farm, the large red bricks pocked with bullet holes, the broken windows. As he neared the building, the stench hit him. The sickeningly sweet, horrifying smell. When he went inside to look for gas or a phone, he found hundreds of dead rabbits in the pen behind the house. Gray bodies, skin and bones. Starved to death. The Serbs had killed the owner and left the animals to their fate.

  Since then, the rabbits had followed him. Become a part of him, both in his dreams and during the rare times he happened to be around the animals. In his mind, he stuffed the horrible images into a sack and threw them into deep water. He knew they would rise up again.

  He went back inside and dove into the reports and the ton of information gathered to get an idea of who Maja was. Maybe they were wasting their time with all these interviews; maybe it was true that she had taken her own life. One that had hardly begun.

  After a long sigh, he started in on the final reports of the day. A female neighbor in her late fifties said that Maja was a very sweet girl. Except when it came to carrying her trash down to the dumpster. And the loud singing that streamed through the thin walls. And the girl had also been thinking about getting a dog—a dog! God only knew how much the animal would bark and how filthy the stairs would be.

  That’s odd, Trokic thought. Maja wanted a dog? Nobody had mentioned that before. It was a stupid little detail that suddenly didn’t fit; who would think about getting a dog while contemplating suicide? Dogs provided security. Protection. But people also became dependent on them, and they were demanding.

  His phone rang just after he laid the report down. It annoyed him to see the private number when he checked the display. For some reason, people believed he worked twenty-four hours a day and had no life. He couldn’t understand where they got that idea.

  “Yes?”

  “Christiane Bach.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We found some high substance levels in our analyses that could indicate she’d been under the influence of a drug.”

  “Which one?”

  “That’s what we need to find out because it’s not anything we’ve seen before. I think you should come in early tomorrow morning. We might be on the verge of finding something that caused her to jump.”

  Chapter Eight

  The rainy day had faded into a cool, wet evening. The sidewalk was still damp and the street dark and deserted when Anja headed for the bus stop. Five people had showed up for the DAMD meeting that evening, and the discussion about possible sanctions against a turkey farmer had been intense and loud. Three of them felt that the film of the abuser’s illegal slaughter of his animals should be leaked to the press, while the two others suggested a campaign of terror against the man, including the sabotage of his commercial vehicles. She had tried to mediate, but her thoughts had been far away.

  All day, since the morning news on TV, she’d been on edge, and now she could focus on thinking things out. Maja was dead, and for a moment, the horror of it had taken hold of her. Maja’s death couldn’t be a coincidence, and Anja mig
ht hold the key to the investigation; she was aware of that. She’d considered going to the police, but only briefly. She’d come up with an idea, one that could add to the coffers of her animal rights organization and help finance their future battles. Which was what led her to call and make her demands.

  And because she was lost in thought, Anja didn’t hear the car’s tires hissing on the wet street as it headed straight for her. She heard the engine a split second before the car slammed into her. Bones cracked and organs collapsed under enormous pressure. She was unaware of being dragged several meters underneath the car. Finally, it stopped and slowly backed up. She didn’t hear it drive away.

  Chapter Nine

  The trembling skin under Clara’s fingers felt as soft as the first goslings of the year. She leaned over and breathed in the scent of Miss Dior, then she took the erect nipple into her mouth. The girl beneath her sighed heavily and squeezed the pillow with her shapely hand. Clara had met her in Posh on 51st St. It had been easy to seduce the young, shy Latino woman, who had been eyeing her from one of the black leather sofas all evening. She’d pressed her body into the girl on the dance floor and whispered unintelligible Spanish words in her ears. The scent of this beauty blended with the slight breeze nudging its way through the open window, bringing with it the park on the other side of the street, car exhaust fumes, the deli on the corner with the fantastic bagels, and the contents of a tipped-over trash can. She stretched out luxuriously and gave herself to the moment.

  A half hour later, the girl was sleeping with her head on Clara’s arm, but Clara lay awake. Everything was perfect. Since January, she’d been studying economy at New York University. A special scholarship was paying for the small Manhattan apartment, which otherwise would have been beyond her means. But all her fantasies about the wild nightlife in the city had shriveled up. Her courses were beyond difficult, and her financial situation only permitted an occasional night on the town. This evening had been her first in a long time. In a week, she was flying home for her parents’ silver anniversary, and though it would be a special occasion, though they’d even paid her ticket, the thought of leaving annoyed her. She was happier now than she’d ever been. Even a long day of being bombarded by statistical analyses couldn’t spoil her mood.