Under a Black Sky (Part of the Daniel Trokics Series) Read online

  He turned on the TV and zapped around until he found a local channel, KTUU. There was nothing about the Asger Vad case, but he left the TV on anyway, figuring the killings would be talked about soon. Someone was discussing the protection of polar bears. Two-thirds of them could be gone within the next thirty or forty years because of global warming, someone thought. A Fairbanks man had been arrested for manufacturing ecstasy, someone on a motorcycle had been hurt after running into a moose, a private plane had crashed in the northern part of the state, and there was a minor oil spill along the coast. Someone explained how to save a seal covered in oil by using a lot of detergent and then drying it off. They gave the address of where to take the injured animals.

  He opened the beer he'd bought at the bar—there was none at the hotel—and tried to collect his thoughts. His head was already crammed with information, and the events of the day flew by. Jet lag made it more difficult to make sense of everything. Outside, big semis were still rumbling in from the harbor, roaring V-6 engines, a freight train howling in the distance. Several buildings in one direction looked empty, like a ghost town, and the trees below were bare. In the other direction, though, he saw a gently-sloping, snow-topped mountain, and he wondered if it was a volcano.

  He shivered. Something didn't add up. Could volcanoes really turn someone into a killer? Were there actually people obsessed with volcanos? And was there a specific volcano involved? The ashes in Asger Vad's throat were a message in some unknown language. Where did the ashes come from? From his hunting buddy, who over the years could have been lots of places with him? Something about Griffin gave him the creeps. Who would put bars on the windows of a small guesthouse? If the nosy neighbor hadn't called, they probably never would have known. Maybe they'd ruined whatever he was up to—what would he do now?

  He drank the rest of his beer, hoping it would send him on his way to a good night's sleep. But the image of Griffin wouldn't disappear. There were too many unresolved questions, like, what could the motive be? An old grudge? And why take the daughter?

  One thing was certain. Someone had not only wanted to kill this friendly man; they'd wanted him to suffer. Badly. And maybe that included taking Marie, his precious daughter.

  He tried to forget Griffin, to keep an open mind. They would be leaving Anchorage the next day, driving into a harsh landscape. He couldn't wait to meet Asger's colleague.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE POLICE HAD BEEN TOLD that Adam Connolly had checked into a lodge in Matsu Valley, where he was writing a research article. It was still early and the dark clouds drew out the dark of the night. But it had stopped snowing, and the roads were clear, which made the beautiful drive less complicated.

  The wooden lodge was an architectural beauty, a fort with conical pillars of stone in various colors and a multi-tiered roof. A range of mountains was barely visible in the background, and the building itself was surrounded by pines of every size.

  Trokic had dug out a thick, high-collared green sweater, and now that the wind had died down, he was comfortable and warm. Angie was wearing tight jeans with long, gray legwarmers and light hiking boots. Her gray stocking cap made her look smaller and more vulnerable, but he knew her pistol sat snugly in the shoulder holster underneath her open coat. He hoped neither one of them would need to use their weapons.

  They knocked on the door of Adam Connolly's room and he opened up, smiling broadly, though the black circles under his eyes made him look tired. Trokic couldn't decide if he'd been crying. It looked more like he'd spent a sleepless night.

  "Come in," Connolly said. "Sorry about the mess. Since I heard about Asger, I haven't been able to pull myself together to get anything done. Every time I sit down to work on my article, he's all I see in my head."

  His blue Adidas jogging suit made him look as if he'd just been out running. Trokic was a bit surprised; Connolly looked younger than he had expected. Asger Vad had been almost fifty, but his colleague looked to be no more than in his mid-thirties. In contrast to most of the people Trokic had seen in Alaska, he had a good suntan. Maybe he hiked a lot in the mountains. Could you get a suntan in this icy climate? He was tall and muscular, with intelligent, clear blue eyes underneath eyebrows so well-formed that they almost looked plucked. His dark hair was slightly kinky.

  "I'm assuming you've come to hear more about Asger. It's so thoroughly evil, what's happened, but I'm not sure how I can help you."

  "We're aware that you knew each other well, that he worked closer with you than anyone else at the observatory," Angie said. "So, we'd like to know if you noticed anything that might help us. But first, have you or anyone at the observatory had a look of the samples we sent you?"

  He nodded. "As I said, I've been here several days, but people at the observatory have had a look, and the consensus seems to be that the ash is from Mount Redoubt. Several of us took samples during the 2009 eruption, so all we had to do was compare them."

  "So, many of you have samples of the ash, samples kept at home, maybe?" Trokic asked.

  Connolly shrugged. "Anybody could have picked up ash during the eruption. It was all over town. I'm sure lots of people thought it was interesting. As you might know, Redoubt was Asger's favorite volcano, if you can put it that way. He liked the area, and he studied the volcano's activity in a historical perspective."

  "And he wrote a book about it," Trokic said.

  "That's correct. He also did a considerable amount of field work. It can be dangerous up there. Several of our volcanoes are practically inaccessible. Sometimes helicopters are the only way to get to some places. I've gone along a few times."

  He sighed heavily and ran his hand through his curly black hair. "Poor Asger, I just can't get it through my head that he's gone. We're going to miss him at the observatory."

  "Maybe all of you have a favorite volcano?" Trokic asked.

  Connolly shrugged again. His blue jogging suit fit tightly. He definitely was a strong man. "I think that's a fair statement," he said. "There are plenty to choose from. We have over one hundred thirty volcanoes in Alaska, and over a third of them have been active since 1760. That's the period of time we know most about."

  "So, if you like volcanoes, Alaska is the place to be," Angie said. She'd taken her stocking cap off, and the stony look in her eyes was back.

  "It's a good place to be, anyway. We spend a lot of time and energy monitoring volcanoes. It's important to keep abreast of their activity. We predicted the 2009 Redoubt eruption, which meant that we could warn airports. It's catastrophic when volcanic ash get sucked into a jet engine. But we'd been observing unusual activity for six months prior to the eruption."

  He nodded toward Angie. "You might remember when all four engines on that Boeing went out at cruising altitude, and they dropped two miles before they got them going again. They were incredibly lucky. There were two hundred thirty-one passengers on board."

  "I remember that, yes," Angie said.

  "Just imagine if Redoubt erupted without warning, and the airspace was filled with planes. And that's not even taking into account the evacuation of people in several regions. There may not be a lot of people living around our volcanos, but you can never know."

  "We get it," Trokic said. "Over in Europe, we're bothered once in a while by volcanoes on Iceland."

  "Then you know what I'm talking about, but we have just as many volcanoes to keep an eye on here. And it happens that some of them erupt unexpectedly. Fortunately, we have several types of seismic monitoring equipment on many of them, to warn us of any activity. Volcanoes have to be taken seriously. All kinds of debris flows down the sides of them at almost five hundred miles an hour, at a temperature of eighteen hundred degrees. I'm sure you've heard of Vesuvius, which buried Pompeii in lava in the year 79. And the city had just held a festival to honor the fire god, Vulcanus, ironically.”

  "That has to be the most famous eruption ever," Trokic said.

  "Yes, but it's not the worst," Connolly said. "It doesn't b
eat what happened in Columbia in 1985, where twenty-three thousand people were killed in a minor eruption of Nevado del Ruiz. It created a lahar, which is an enormous amount of water, ice, rock, and other materials that flow out into the surrounding area. Lahars are incredibly dangerous."

  "What about Redoubt? Is it active?" Angie asked. "I haven't heard a lot about it lately."

  "It's at a normal alert level. Green, is how we put it."

  "How did you get along with Asger?" Trokic asked. "Were you friends, or what? I've noticed there's a lot of competition in research sometimes."

  Connolly looked away. "You're right. Who's had the most articles published in prestigious journals, who's been working where, arguments, and so forth. But Asger was my doctoral advisor. We never had any problems."

  He shook his head. "I don't know what I'm going to do. In general, he was a good mentor, he was an inspiration. Right now, I can't see how he can be replaced."

  "And where were you the night of…?"

  Connolly narrowed his eyes and stared at Trokic as if he was some disgusting insect. He gestured angrily with his hand. "What's that supposed to mean? I didn't kill him."

  "We're not saying you did. It's routine procedure."

  That was the line he always used in Denmark. He assumed the police in Alaska said the same; Angie nodded.

  Someone knocked on the door, and all three of them stared at each other. "Probably my little brother," Connolly mumbled.

  He walked over and opened up. A man in his mid-twenties with longish straight hair strolled in, carrying a printer and a stack of documents. "You owe me one for this. I got studying to do too."

  Suddenly, he noticed the two officers and stopped so abruptly that the pile of papers fell and scattered out on the floor.

  "Anchorage police," Angie said, nodding at him. "I'm Detective Johnson, and this is my partner from the Danish police, Detective Trokic."

  "Hank," the young man mumbled. Nervously, he eyed his brother, and Trokic wondered if he knew something about Connolly. "This must be something about Asger Vad, right? I just stopped by with this stuff for my brother. Actually, I don't have much time, I got to go. Sorry to interrupt."

  "No problem," Angie said, smiling at him.

  Connolly hurriedly gathered the papers up. Trokic leaned down to help, but the volcano researcher spoke sharply: "No, no, I can do it."

  Trokic glanced at what was written on the papers he'd already picked up. Suddenly, the room turned quiet. He stared at Connolly. "What is all this?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  "IS this some of Asger Vad's research, or what?" Trokic asked. "His name is at the top. Has he published this? Where did it come from?"

  Connolly's brother looked like he wanted to disappear into thin air, and Connolly himself was suddenly nervous, his eyes darting from the yellow carpet to the printer and back to Trokic. "It's just some things he wrote to me a few days before the tragedy. Some notes, you could almost call them."

  "Really?" Angie said, her eyes boring into him.

  "Yes. They've been on my desk since then. Hank is studying psychology at the university, and I asked him to go into my office and bring me all the papers. I need them for my article. It's going to be difficult enough without Asger here to help."

  Angie kept staring at him.

  "But has this been published?" Trokic asked.

  Connolly swallowed nervously and ran a hand through his dark hair. "No. I just told you, they're notes, sort of. Some things he jotted down for himself, but he gave them to me the last time we were together. He wasn't going to do anything with them himself."

  "Can we take this with us?" Trokic asked Angie.

  Connolly looked panic-stricken, and at once his brother slipped his own longish dark hair behind his ears and stared at them coldly. "Don't you need a search warrant to take anything away? Asger Vad's name may be printed on these papers, but he gave them to my brother, and that makes them his property."

  Angie sent him an icy look. "This has nothing to do with you; please step outside and wait until we've finished speaking with your brother."

  Hank snickered, turned around, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  "We'll think about it," Angie said, crossing her arms. "In the meantime, let's get back to where you were Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning. This isn't anything personal, as my partner said. We have to ask. Especially those close to Asger."

  Connolly cleared his throat and laid the papers down on his desk by the window. He seemed to have pulled himself together. He licked his lips. "Tuesday night, you say, early Wednesday. Okay. I was in Anchorage, doing some shopping. Necessities, while I'm staying here. Then I had a beer with Hank at a bar, then I drove back here."

  "With Hank, alias the little brother outside the door here?" Angie said. "And no alibi for the rest of the night?"

  "I was back late on Tuesday. You have to drop the key off at the desk when you leave, and I picked it up when I got back. You can ask downstairs. It was a blonde woman in her forties, curly hair. I'm sure she remembers me asking for the key around midnight. As I understand it, Asger and his family were murdered after midnight. It can't be me, I was too far away to get there."

  "In theory," Trokic said, "you could have picked up the key about midnight and drove back to Anchorage, so it looked like you were here all the time."

  Connolly rubbed his throat and looked as though he were thinking seriously about that. Finally, he said, "Okay, so I don't have an alibi for that time. Is that what you're saying? But I didn't kill him. If you think I did, you'll have to have a lot more proof than you do now."

  "What about Marie? Asger's daughter? Do you know her?"

  "I've said hello to her a few times when I stopped by Asger's office and she was there. Nice little girl. Cheerful. I'm assuming you haven't found her yet since you're asking about her."

  "No, we haven't," Angie said. "And she's a very pretty girl. Did you like her?"

  The researcher snickered. "You're crazy if you think I had anything to do with her disappearance. I wasn't interested in her. She's just a kid, for Christ's sake, I never said more than a few words to her. And where am I supposed to be hiding her?" He stuck his hand out into the room. "You can see for yourself she's not here."

  "We will check everything you say," Trokic said. "So, if you have anything to tell us, it's a good idea to do it now."

  Connolly didn't answer.

  Trokic switched angles. "Did you ever speak personally with Asger? About his family life?"

  Connolly shook his head. "He was sort of a private guy. Friendly on the surface, but somewhat reserved. I was never sure if he really liked me."

  "That's putting it bluntly," Angie said, gazing around at the framed pastel-colored drawings on the wall.

  "I thought you said he was a good friend," Trokic said.

  Connolly shrugged and looked out the window. "He was older. A mentor, like I said. I didn't need to be close friends with him. But there was no bad blood between us."

  Trokic was trying to figure out this volcano expert. Something was fishy. Connolly was almost certainly using Asger Vad's work for his personal gain. Whether or not it was legal, he couldn't know, but Connolly showed no signs of grief. Maybe he hoped to take over as the top volcano researcher in the region. They would have to check into that at the Volcano Observatory. That didn't necessarily mean he killed the family, but this man seemed cunning, and Trokic didn't like that. And now they knew the volcano ash came from Redoubt. Was there really a clear connection to the volcano world, or had someone simply swept up some ashes off the street? It could be anyone.

  "Okay, we're finished for now," Angie said. "We'll check all this out, you can be sure of that. Sometime today, you're going into Anchorage and make an official statement, that's top priority. Then we'll take a sample of your DNA, fingerprints, all that."

  "What? Seriously? I'm a suspect? But I don't have time, and—"

  "We expect to see you at the station someti
me today."

  "But –"

  "Otherwise, we will come for you."

  HANK WAS in the lobby when they came out.

  "So, you're willing to sign a statement to the effect that you've just picked those papers up from your brother's office?" Angie said.

  He stared coolly at her. "I am."

  "You understand you could go to prison if you're not telling the truth? This is a homicide, and a young girl has disappeared. The fact that it's your brother won't make one bit of difference."

  He smiled. "I got no problem with that."

  "And can you confirm you were with your brother Tuesday evening?"

  "Yeah, we had a beer at a bar. He left around midnight. Maybe a little earlier."

  "All right. That's all for now. Thank you for your help. We're not out to harass anyone, but we have to ask."

  Hank seemed to relax a bit at that. "Good luck with everything."

  BACK AT THE CAR, they were both lost in thought. They'd had a short conversation with the receptionist, who hadn't observed anything unusual and could confirm Connolly's story. He'd left Tuesday afternoon and dropped his key off at the desk. Sometime after midnight, he returned to the lodge and picked up the key. She assumed that he went back to his room, and she hadn't seen him leave after that. But she couldn't rule out the possibility.

  "I don't know," Angie said. "From what I could see, he had some serious muscles under that jogging suit. A strong guy. But what's his motive? Maybe some sort of academic conflict? There doesn't seem to be a lot of money in volcanoes. Not that I know of, anyway. Someone would have had to stumble onto something valuable near a volcano. Gold or something. There's been a lot of gold found in this state. I'm starting to babble here."

  Trokic thought that over. "I think it's more likely he knew Marie, that she was the target. Maybe Connolly came back to the lodge, picked up the key, drove back to Anchorage, killed the family and took her."