As soon as they got back on the road Sohlberg said:
“Sorry I fell asleep. You must think I’m getting old. . ”
“No. I stopped back there at the gas station because I too was getting sleepy with the afternoon heat and that big sandwich I ate a couple of miles ago. Do you want some coffee? My thermos holds almost a gallon.”
“No thanks. I no longer drink coffee. . haven’t in years.”
“I’m surprised you don’t drink coffee. All good Norwegians drink plenty of it. Why did you stop?”
“We were living in the United States. . in Utah where it was impossible to find good coffee.”
“Why? Don’t the Americans have good coffee?”
“They do but most of Utah is Mormon and they don’t drink coffee or black tea. . or alcohol for religious and health reasons. Anyway. . feel free to drink whatever you want from my case of Farris water.”
A few minutes later they both stretched to shake off their grogginess. Wangelin drove expertly at high speeds on the highway.
“Constable Wangelin. . tell me about the Haugen family. Tell me everything. I’m meeting the father and stepmother tomorrow.”
“I’m looking forward to that. We interviewed them five times each but they gave jumbled confusing explanations that only made sense when you heard them and no sense at all after you left the parents and had time to think about their statements. In hindsight. . they bamboozled us.”
“Let’s start with the biological mother.”
“I feel sorry for her and what she’s going through but she’s a bit of a flake.”
“ How so?”
“She’s not crazy but somewhat slightly unbalanced.”
“How so?”
“You’ll notice that her hair style and hair color change radically and constantly. One day it’s straight black-hair. . the next day frizzy blond-ish hair. . a week later she has dreadlocks and a month later she has bleached spiky hair. . ”
“Come now Constable Wangelin. Surely her hairstyle is not that important.”
“Maybe yes. Maybe no. Why does she do it? I can’t even imagine the amount of time she puts into fixing her hair.”
“You should’ve asked her. Why do you change your hair style and hair color so frequently? How much time does it take? Her answers truthful or not would’ve been revealing.”
“Ja! I should’ve asked.”
“You’ll see as you get more experienced how those little open-ended questions add up. . the innocent little questions about so-called meaningless or trivial or irrelevant matters almost always bring you tremendous insights into the person’s mind. . that’s what you have to do. . ask ask ask. . dig the truth out.”
“Ja.”
“Ask questions even when it feels very uncomfortable. Sometimes the stress in awkward personal interactions will break down the walls and let you take a peak inside.”
“But it feels so awkward to ask personal questions of a stranger.”
“I know it goes against our famous Norwegian reserve. But you have to do it to be an effective police officer. You have to put aside our Viking tradition of living in extreme isolation because of the steep mountains between each fjord. . you have to get past the ingrained mind-set where everyone from the next isolated fjord is a total stranger who speaks a totally different dialect.”
“I never saw it that way but it’s so true.”
“Tell me about Maya Engen. Start with her reaction to Karl’s disappearance.”
“In a nutshell. . she’s a woman with a guilty conscience. . for abandoning Karl Haugen when he needed her the most.”
“How so?”
“In her mind she brought Karl into the broken home of a failed marriage. . she separated from Karl’s father less than two years after marrying him. The marriage went bad shortly after the first year anniversary. . if not beforehand.”
“What caused the breakup?”
“The father is vague on the reasons but he insists that he and his wife led separate lives while living together as husband and wife.”
“Interesting. . a man who insists that things are one way under his roof when things are in fact another before the eyes of the law. In other words he was married in the eyes of the law to Maya Engen but in his eyes he’s not married to her under his own roof. The man seems to live in his own universe. . his own version of reality no? He is married but insists he is not. Interesting. A man who denies reality. . or creates his own reality.”
“He says that their separate lives were the reason for why he started dating Agnes Haugen then known as Agnes Sorensen. . her maiden name.”
“What’s his first wife’s version of the breakup?”
“According to Maya Engen their marriage ended because of his adultery with Agnes. Of course he continues insisting that by the time he met Agnes the marriage was on the rocks and that they were already separated. I checked and found out that really was not true. . he was still living with his wife in the same house when he began a relationship with Agnes.”
“That was gutsy of him.”
“Or cowardly. Anyway. . they got a divorce when Maya Engen was eight months pregnant with Karl. And by the time Karl was born the father had his new woman Agnes living in the house with him.”
“How convenient.”
“It gets more convenient for him as you’ll see in a few minutes. Gunnar and Maya have Karl on April. . they file for divorce in May. . and the divorce is final five months later in October. . just two years after they got married.”
“He’s a fickle man,” said Sohlberg who detested uncertain men. “The wishy-washy sort who change wives like they change shirts or shoes. A fickle man would explain why Karl’s mother is always changing her hairstyle and colors.”
“How so Chief Inspector?”
“She does that to keep a fickle man happy. . the constant hairstyle and hair color changes mean that he has a new wife to look at every day.”
“Very good Chief Inspector. That fits perfectly with her behavior. Also she was briefly married before she met and married Karl’s father.”
“So the Haugen marriage was her second marriage by age thirty?”
“Ja Chief Inspector. She had a son with her first husband and that boy has always lived full-time with the father.”
“Huh! So she too changes husbands as frequently as her hair style and color. Think of it. She’s now on husband number three by the age of thirty-eight. Or an average of one husband and one child per decade. . ”
“Ja. That’s how it is nowadays. . not unusual,” said Constable Wangelin. She again gave Sohlberg a look that made him feel like some old-fashioned prude.
“What else?”
“After the divorce Maya Engen the mother has primary custody of Karl and the father Gunnar has visitation rights. He always pays the child support on time and in full. Gunnar and his live-in woman Agnes pressure Maya Engen to let Karl spend more time with them.
“Maya Engen doesn’t want Karl to have an absentee father and she has to work and needs someone to watch the baby in the afternoons after daycare. So Maya and Gunnar reach an agreement. Karl stays nights with his mother Maya after he spends two to three hours every afternoon with Gunnar and Agnes. . and Thor who is Agnes’s nine-year-old son by another marriage.”
“What a cozy family. The father. . the mistress. . and the son of the mistress. I don’t see Karl fitting easily into that cozy family.”
“Karl had to fit in because a year later his mother Maya gets very sick with liver disease. . hepatitis B. . she is forced to go to Sweden for life-saving treatment.”
“What? I’ve seen her on television and the newspapers and she looks like a picture of perfect health!”
“The fact is that she had to go to Sweden for treatment.”
“Sweden?. . Don’t we have good doctors in Norway?”
“I-”
“What’s wrong with Norwegian medical care?” shouted Sohlberg. He was extremely sensitive about Norway’s humiliating subjugation until 1905 to Denmark and Sweden which had respectively ruled over Norway since 1536 and 1814.