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He hadn’t decided whether he’d put himself through such a viewing or not. Juliette had urged him not to unless he couldn’t find closure any other way. She was probably right.
He and Sven met the detective at the impound where the car was still being carefully examined. It was up on a lift with two technicians underneath. The tires were melted, one was even missing, and the car looked like it had been lit on fire and shoved into a trash compactor.
“Mr. Sorenson.” Detective Frasier held out his hand and walked toward him.
“Detective. Please call me Wilhelm.”
“All right. I’d like to show you something.” He led Wilhelm to stand next to the raised car. “Brakes failed. Typically if that happens via sabotage, it’s because the brake line was cut.”
Wilhelm peered up at the undercarriage. “How could you tell?” Everything about the car looked broken and ruined. Surely a single cut could be camouflaged in an accident like this when the crash destroys damn near everything.
“It’s not always easy in a case like this when things are torn apart or melted. They haven’t found anything that looks like it might have been a clean cut. Just accident damage. But they did find residue in the braking system that leads them to believe that the brake fluid was replaced with something else. They haven’t analyzed it fully yet, but it’s not the right fluid. So the brakes failed. Clever, really, because if the car had burned much longer than it did, there’d likely have been no way to discover it.”
Wilhelm clenched his teeth together, opened and closed his fists, the urge to punch someone, hurt someone, for what had happened growing inside him. “So, my brother was murdered.”
“I’m convinced, yes. If it was just funky brake fluid, that could be an incompetent mechanic, a mistake. But they’re finding other signs of tampering, as if someone wanted to make absolutely sure they’d lose control of the car. If the brakes didn’t fail, the steering seems to have been set up to fail. There are ample signs that someone wanted this car to crash. I’m sorry.”
Wilhelm nodded. “How do we find out who did this?”
The detective gave him a sad smile. “I’m looking into a few leads. Business associates, Carol’s friends and family. Not much more to go on right now.” The detective walked to a desk against the wall. Wilhelm followed and was handed a plastic envelope.
“These were recovered from the accident site.” The envelope held his brother’s wedding ring, and Carol’s engagement ring and wedding band. “I’m releasing them from evidence and thought you might like to have them.”
“Thank you.” Wilhelm took the plastic sleeve, numb, wondering if the detective expected an emotional display or whether he might even suspect Wilhelm if he appeared too stoic. “I’ll put these in a safe place for their children when they’re grown.”
The detective bobbed his head and took a deep breath. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to the station and ask some questions, get a statement from you, just technicalities. All things I could have done over the phone, but since you came all this way …”
“Of course.” Wilhelm folded the plastic sleeve into a small package and tucked it into the pocket inside his blazer. “And I have some questions for you too.”
Detective Frasier smiled and gestured toward the door of the impound garage. “I expected nothing less.”
*
After about an hour at the station, with both his and the detective’s questions answered as thoroughly as possible, Wilhelm decided that the last way he could honor his brother would be to actually go and see his body. Detective Frasier tried to persuade him not to once again, but Wilhelm felt it was something he had to do.
He worried he’d spent the rest of his life regretting the decision not to go, and once his brother and Carol were cremated, per their wishes, it was something he couldn’t undo. He’d had enough regret in his life when it came to his brother.
It might have been a mercy that the body on the table looked nothing like Halgar. It was shaped somewhat like a man, but blackened from the fire, shrunken, appearing more like a prop from a horror movie than the brother he grew up with. And the burnt smoke smell, the bitter char scent, was almost unbearable. Humans couldn’t understand how deeply a scent could work its way into a body. Wilhelm knew he’d be trying to rid himself of the memory of that one for weeks.
Under it all, though, he caught the faint scent of Halgar. There was no denying it. And as hard as it was to face the loss, he felt better prepared to move on from it.
When he got back to the hotel, ready to research online and find a place he could let his tiger run free later that night, the light on his room phone was blinking. He had a message at the desk. As the clerk read it to him, he sat on the bed and ran his fingers through his hair.
Ralph Marcoby. Carol’s brother.
Wilhelm didn’t know him, had only met him once or twice at family functions when he and his brother still spoke. He probably had the same kind of questions Wilhelm had.
But he wasn’t in the mood to answer them. He needed time to process everything, to try to come to grips with all that happened and all he’d seen. And he needed to talk to Juliette. Instinctively, Wilhelm knew that speaking to her would make him feel better than anything else he could do at the moment, including letting his tiger run free.
With a deep sigh, he decided to call Ralph back merely to get that conversation over with. Then it wouldn’t be hanging over his head when he called Juliette.
Ralph answered on the first ring. “Wilhelm. Sorry to hunt you down at the hotel this way, but I didn’t have your number. How are you doing?”
“That’s fine, Ralph. I’m all right. You?”
“About as good as can be expected.”
“Right.”
