The Princess of Burundi

Twenty-four

Vincent Hahn woke with a start. He checked his watch. A little after nine. He had been asleep for only a few minutes and had immediately slipped into a dream. A man’s voice was coming from somewhere. It took him a few seconds to understand what it was: the news on the radio.

He found Vivan in the kitchen by the telephone. She looked up at him with a frightened expression and he knew that she knew.

“Put down the phone,” he said and took a few steps closer.

“You’re just like your brother,” she said. “Lying and fighting all the time.”

“Shut up. Don’t mix him up in this.”

“Why did you do it?”

He took the receiver from her and she let him do it. He saw that she was sweating. The piece “Waltz of the Sea-Eagle” by Evert Taube was playing on the radio. He was very close to her. Blood was seeping through the bandage on his forehead.

“She was a whore,” Vincent said softly.

“Did you know her?”

He flinched and ripped the phone cord from the wall.

“We went to school together. She was nothing but a shit even then.”

“It’s such a long time ago. Can’t you let bygones be bygones?”

Vivan knew that Vincent had been unhappy at school, been bullied and shunned. Wolfgang had once said that his brother was the perfect victim.

“I remember everything,” he said, his voice so low now she could hardly catch his words.

He pulled the phone cord between his hands.

“I won’t say anything,” she said.

“Who were you calling?”

“Nettan. She’s in the middle of a divorce and wants me to go with her to the lawyer’s office.”

“Who the hell is Nettan?”

His outburst came on so suddenly that she pulled back and would have lost her balance if he hadn’t grabbed her arms.

“Who the fucking hell is Nettan?”

“You’re hurting me,” Vivan moaned in his grip. His disgusting breath nauseated her. “She’s my best friend.”

“Friend!” he spat.

“Why don’t you stay here?” she said. “I need the company.”

He let go of her suddenly and she started to collapse, then steadied herself against the kitchen counter and straightened up. No crying, she thought to herself. He hates teary women.

“What do you mean ‘stay here’?”

She swallowed and chose her words carefully. She had a flashback to Wolfgang’s rages and her attempts to placate him. After years of practice she had become more adept.

“I’m lonely,” she said and looked away.

“Lonely,” Vincent repeated.

“I don’t care about that woman. She hit you, after all.”

“Yes, she hit me.”

He paused with a thoughtful look on his face, and Vivan thought she saw the same quality of gentleness that had drawn her to Wolfgang so many years ago. The brothers had both inherited their mother’s rounded and slightly childish features, but also their father’s heavier ones, a mixture that was reflected in their intense emotional vacillations.

“That blow she gave you could have killed you, if you didn’t have such a strong skull.”

He sank down onto a chair. She put a hand on his bandaged head. If only he had died, she thought, no one would have missed him. But then she instantly regretted her thought-it was unfair. He was a human being like anyone else.

“Would you like some tea?”

He shook his head weakly.

“A little juice?”

He nodded. She quickly made up a pitcher of rhubarb juice and poured him a glass. He drained it. The gentle expression returned.

“Wolfgang says hello,” she said. “He called me a few days ago.”

Despite their divorce and the years of conflict, Vivan and Wolfgang stayed in touch. He called from Tel Aviv three or four times a year.

“You haven’t called me.”

“I’ve tried to, but you aren’t home very much. Anyway, Wolfgang is fine but he complained about all the trouble they’re having.”

“It’s the fucking Arabs,” Vincent said.

Vivan was very careful not to get into the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Instead she relayed gossip from Wolfgang. One of their cousins had had a grandchild, and a few other relatives had taken a trip to Poland. Vincent listened with interest. Vivan had discovered that he liked hearing news even about distant relatives, had memorized names and trivial facts about them to a degree that amazed her.

“I heard that Benjamin got married,” he said, and Vivan pretended to be surprised.

“Really? I had no idea. Who did he get married to?”

“Some American girl who bought a house in East Jerusalem.”

They continued to talk about people they both knew. Vincent grew calmer, drank more juice. Vivan kept him entertained with questions and comments. She suggested they celebrate Christmas together and his face lit up a bit when she said that.

The attack came out of nowhere. Vivan hardly had time to register what was happening, let alone understand where it had come from. She died unknowing, with a small gurgling sound not unlike that which arises from a plugged drain.

He laid her on the bed and was somewhat reminded of Julia. They had the same beautiful air of peace. The marks on her neck from the phone cord were like the angry red strands of a necklace. The blue-toned tip of her tongue stuck out a few centimeters. Vincent chuckled at it and poked it back into her mouth, then quickly pulled his fingers away, convinced that she was going to bite him.

His chuckles gave way to an unarticulated roar, which died away almost at once, and he sat down on the floor to look at his sister-in-law. Almost family, he thought. As close to family as I can get in Uppsala. His feeling of loneliness was intensified by the sound of the clock ticking, as if to say, You are dead, you are dead.

Vincent reached for the clock, which he remembered Wolfgang had bought on a business trip. He threw it against the wall. An Argentine tango was playing on the radio in the kitchen.

He put his hand on hers. It was still warm, and suddenly he felt dizzy. The work of a moment and a person is gone, he thought. He let his hand travel up her arm, he stroked it lovingly. Somewhere in the innermost depths of his confused mind he sensed that he had committed an unforgivable act. Vivan, the one who had smiled at him in the window, the one who had been frightened by his appearance but nonetheless given him shelter, the one who had given him juice. Almost family.

He sensed that she had been as lonely as he, even though she always talked about her girlfriends. He thought suddenly that he could take his own life, that he should do it.

He got up, walked into the kitchen, picked up a chair that had been knocked over, and drank some more juice. When he took hold of the pitcher to pour himself yet another glass, he experienced something like an electric shock. A greeting from Vivan. It was her hand that had last held the pitcher. Now she was making her presence known. She would do this as long as he lived, he realized.

He found a laundry line with the cleaning supplies but could not bring himself to tie a noose. Instead he remained sitting with the green plastic-coated line in his hands, unable to kill himself.

After about an hour or so-he was unable to determine how long-he let the line glide from his hands and stood up. He ate some leftovers in the refrigerator, went into the sewing room, and fell asleep.

Allan Fredriksson had traced Vincent Hahn’s brother to Tel Aviv and with the help of Israeli police had managed to reach him on the phone.

Wolfgang Hahn, who worked as a computer-science instructor, had not been in Sweden for seven years. During that time he had talked to Vincent on the phone a handful of times, most recently a year or so ago. He even claimed not to know his brother’s most recent number. When asked if there was anyone in Uppsala who would be able to provide more information, Wolfgang mentioned his ex-wife, who he knew had sporadic contact with Vincent.

“How are things back in Sweden anyway?” Wolfgang asked. “I hear you’ll soon have even more Arabs than we do, and look at the problems they make for us!”

“Maybe that’s because you took their land,” Fredriksson said calmly. “What was Tel Aviv called fifty years ago?”

Wolfgang Hahn laughed.

“I see they’ve infiltrated the Swedish police,” he said, but with no hostility in his voice.

“Will you have a white Christmas?” was Fredriksson’s last question. When he hung up, he realized that Wolfgang Hahn hadn’t even asked why the police wanted to find his brother.

He looked up Vivan Molin in the phone book. She was listed as a laboratory assistant, living on Johannesbäcksgatan. According to Wolfgang she had been on disability for a while, he was unsure of the exact reason. They had no children together and she lived alone. A few years ago there had been a boyfriend in the picture, but he hadn’t heard anything about him for a while. Vivan Molin did not answer the phone.

Fredriksson called the health agency. She was not listed as being on disability. No employer was registered by her name either. Her last employment seemed to have been a temporary position with the Uppsala Biomedical Center. That position had lasted until August.

How likely was it that Hahn had looked her up? According to his brother, they were not on particularly good terms. Fredriksson sighed. Johansson and Palm were going door to door in Sävja, but so far they it had given them nothing. Most of Hahn’s neighbors had not even been able to identify him from the picture. His closest neighbor, a Bosnian from Sara-jevo, had only smiled enigmatically when asked if he associated at all with Vincent Hahn.

Fredriksson pushed the papers away. He didn’t even want to be working on the Hahn case right now. It was the murder of Little John that concerned him. He was sure they would be able to solve it eventually, not from any concrete knowledge but simply from the years of experience and the sense that a murder in John’s circles would eventually be cleared up. The new information about the poker game and John’s alleged winnings provided them with a motive. They would search for their perpetrator among the poker players-Fredriksson was 100 percent convinced of this. Now they simply had to uncover the whole story.

Haver and he had discussed potential overlap between Little John and Hahn, but both of them were skeptical. It was most likely a coincidence that they had been classmates. Little John’s murder was no work of Hahn’s. Even though they knew almost nothing about Hahn’s profile, his background and behavior, the fact that Little John’s body had been dumped in Libro made Hahn an unlikely suspect. He had neither a car nor a driver’s license-how would he have been able to carry it off?

Someone had proposed the idea that Hahn was targeting former classmates with pets. John with his fish, and Gunilla Karlsson with her rabbit. That Hahn saw himself as a freedom fighter for animals. But Fredriksson had dismissed this idea as highly unlikely.

He called Vivan Molin again, with no result. Should he drive out to Johannesbäck and check it out? The fact was that Vivan Molin was the only name he had. And it was possible that she would be able to provide them with additional names.

Fredriksson took off his indoor shoes, tied his boots, put on his fur hat, and left.

December. The sun had barely made it over the horizon that day, but it didn’t matter anymore. The clouds lay heavily over Uppsala and there was snow in the air. Fredriksson paused for a second before he turned the ignition. Christmas party. The words came out of nowhere. He couldn’t remember exactly, but this was probably connected to slumbering childhood memories, boisterous adult voices, the children more quiet, full of anticipation, dressed up, hair slicked down, the Santa Claus with his fake beard.

In the olden days, Fredriksson would let the words roll over his tongue. Even to say it now sounded outdated.

“In the olden days,” he said aloud.

That was something people said. Had it really been better in the olden days? He turned the key and the motor answered with a roar. Too many thoughts, too much gas.

Two cars had collided at the corner of Verkmästargatan and Apelgatan. Fredriksson thought about stopping but changed his mind when he caught sight of the face of one of the involved parties. Collisions weren’t his thing. When he had worked a beat he had never much liked dealing with traffic accidents, not because of the potential physical injuries and gore but because of the shocking stupidity of the drivers.

Fredriksson rang Vivan Molin’s doorbell, waited for a few minutes, then rang again. No response. He peeked in through the mail slot in the door and caught a whiff of stale apartment air. There was no mail or newspaper to be seen on the hall floor. When he let the mail slot swing shut he thought he heard a soft click from inside the apartment, like the sound of someone turning on a lamp. He strained to hear anything else, opened the mail slot again, but now all was quiet. Had he imagined it? He straightened his back.

He took out his cell phone and the slip of paper with Molin’s phone number. He let her phone ring six times but didn’t hear any sound from the apartment. Either her phone wasn’t working or she had turned it off.

Fredriksson thought hard. He turned and looked at the neighbor’s door. M. ANDERSSON was inscribed on the mail slot. He rang the bell. A woman opened immediately, as if she had been waiting with her hand on the door handle. She was around seventy years of age, with long white hair, braided and pinned in a knot. The hand on the door handle was thin, with large swollen blue veins.

He introduced himself and said he was looking for Vivan Molin.

“Something’s not right,” she said immediately.

“How do you mean?”

“There were such strange sounds this morning. And a man came by last night.”

“At what time did you hear these sounds?”

“Around eleven. I was finishing the Christmas spare ribs-I’m going to Kristinehamn this afternoon. He was out there shouting on the street.”

“What did he look like?”

“I didn’t see him so well. He was wearing a hat. Vivan let him in.”

“Vivan went down and opened the front door?”

“Yes, it is locked at nine.”

“These sounds you were talking about, what did they sound like?”

“Like screams. Something has happened. I almost called the police but I didn’t know if I should get involved in other people’s business.”

“How well do you know Vivan? Does she often have visitors in the evening?”

“No, never. This part of the building is very quiet.”

“Does she go to work?”

“No, she’s on disability. She was burned out, I think they call it.”

Fredriksson thanked her for the information and went down to the street. He made a call to the station and eight minutes later a patrol car pulled up. A van from the locksmith company Pettersson & Barr pulled up right behind them. The locksmith was a young man with Rastafarian braids, hardly more than twenty.

Fredriksson and his colleagues discussed their options. If Vincent Hahn was in the apartment he could very well be armed. It was doubtful that he would have access to firearms, more likely a knife or other object.

The Rastafarian locksmith worked on the lock for about thirty seconds. He whistled as he worked and Fredriksson asked him to be quiet.

“Cool,” he said. “Are you Sweden’s answer to Carella?”

Fredriksson had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded. Slättbrant, famous among his colleagues for his implacability, opened the door.

“Police!” he shouted before going in. “Anyone home?”

Silence.

“Torsten Slättbrant from the police. I’m coming in.”

He forced the door all the way open and stepped into the apartment, his gun in his left hand. He took another step while looking at what Fredriksson assumed was the kitchen door. Then he stood quietly for ten seconds, as if testing the air like a hunting dog.

Slättbrant looked back and shook his head.

“Is anyone home?” he shouted again, and Fredriksson felt impatient.

“Heavy, man,” said the Rastafarian, and Fredriksson gestured for him to stay back.

“You’re no Carella,” the young man said again and walked down half a flight of stairs.

“There’s a woman under the bed in the bedroom,” said Göthe, the other officer. Fredriksson nodded as if he already knew this.

“Strangled, I think,” said Göthe. The young locksmith appeared behind him and craned his head forward.

“Get lost!” Fredriksson shouted.

“Can we strike Hahn from the Little John case?” Ottosson’s question hung in the air among the assembled officers for a few seconds. One of the overhead fluorescent lights was flickering and underscored the anxious atmosphere.

“Can’t we have that light fixed?” Sammy Nilsson asked.

“I, for one, don’t believe in the connection for a second,” Fredriksson said. “Hahn’s profile is totally different. You’ve seen his correspondence, a misanthrope with a twisted worldview. I read one letter he wrote to the transit authorities where he proposed a special immigrant bus so that ethnic Swedes wouldn’t have to associate with foreign scum, as he put it. I think his being John’s former classmate is pure coincidence.”

“I’m not so sure,” Sammy said. “We can drop the question of motive here. This guy is a nut case and simply did something on impulse. Maybe he bumped into John, recognized him from their school days. Maybe something had happened between them a long time ago and it led to a confrontation.”

“But where would such a confrontation have taken place?” Morenius said. “On Vaksalagatan downtown where John waited for the bus? Where did the murder, not to mention the torture, actually occur, and how did Hahn transport the body to Libro?”

Morenius shook his head.

“We know very little about Hahn,” Sammy said. “Maybe he had access to another apartment, maybe even to a car. We haven’t actually met a single person yet who knew him and could tell us how he spends his days.”

Ottosson scratched his head.

“I think we can disregard Hahn for now,” he said, but he did not sound entirely convinced.

“Little John’s killer is one of these poker players or someone else who keeps to society’s fringes,” Berglund said.

“We have to proceed with open minds,” Ottosson said. “Not lose the tempo. It’s very easy to lose one’s focus, even unintentionally.”

“Okay,” Haver said. “Eight guys, excluding John, were there that night. Ljusnemark gave us all the names. Four of them, plus Ljusnemark, have been questioned today. That leaves three remaining. One of them is abroad, possibly in Holland. His mother lives there. One has disappeared from the face of the earth, and the third is Mossa, the Iranian, whom we all know and who appears to be out of town for the moment. We have talked to his brother and mother, who live here.”

“Who is the one in Holland?”

“Dick Lindström.”

“The one with the teeth?”

Haver nodded.

“And who is the person who has disappeared from the face of the earth, as you put it?”

“One Allan Gustav Rosengren. He has the nickname The Lip. He’s been convicted twice of trafficking in stolen goods. The last time was five years ago. He has no permanent address. The last one is in Mälarhöjden two years ago when he was renting a room from an old lady. He moved out and since then he has disappeared from all sources.”

“One with teeth, and one with a lip,” Riis said.

“Can we rule out Ljusnemark?” Morenius asked.

“I think so,” Haver said. “Too much of a coward. I can’t see him cutting off a finger.”

“You’re assuming the motive is money?”

“Gambling debts don’t seem likely to me,” said Haver. “Everyone so far corroborates the fact that John won. The alleged amounts have varied somewhat but seem to cluster around two hundred thousand. If John had had an outstanding debt he would have paid up.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to?”

“Well, that’s a possibility.”

“Maybe it whet his appetite and he went on to play more games in which he accumulated debt?”

“Even more possible,” Haver said. “The game took place sometime at the end of October. There was a lot of time for poker between then and the murder.”

“I don’t agree,” Ottosson said. “Little John was smart and cautious by nature. He would never have risked losing so much money.”

“But to win in the first place he must already have had a lot. Many of these guys say he was betting freely, almost wildly. No one had seen him play this way before.”

“Maybe that’s why he won. Everyone was taken by surprise,” Fredriksson said.

“Can someone simply have been ticked off?” Morenius asked. He always had a question.

“Not enough to commit murder,” Haver said.

He wanted someone to think of something new. Everything that had come out so far were things he had already mulled over in his mind, but at the same time he knew the discussion had to proceed in this way in order to eventually construct a likely scenario.

“If we return to Hahn,” Ryde, the forensic expert, said. “It’s clear that Vivan Molin was strangled sometime this morning. Hahn had spent the night, we have recovered samples of his hair from the bed in the room he most likely would have used. Today’s paper had been crumpled up and shoved to the bottom of the trash, as if he had tried to hide it from her. The phone cord has been torn from the wall. He may have been trying to prevent her from calling, or else it was something he grabbed when he wanted to strangle her. In some way, we think, she found out that he had attacked Karlsson in Sävja.”

“Radio or TV,” Fredriksson said. “There was a radio in the kitchen.”

Ryde nodded. Only Fredriksson could interrupt him without getting a caustic remark.

“True. We’ll have to check if the Sävja incident was reported in the morning news. There’s no trace of a third person, even if we can’t rule it out. Murder, unclear motive, either uncontrolled impulse or to keep someone quiet.”

“Excellent,” Ottosson said and smiled, a smile that bore witness to great fatigue. He was running a fever and several of them had already suggested he go home to bed, not least Lundin, who refused to get anywhere near him.

“How did he get from Akademiska Hospital to Johannesbäck?” Berglund asked. “He must have had access to a car.”

“It’s not very likely that he took a bus,” Fredriksson agreed. “We’ll have to check with the taxi companies.”

“The only thing we can do is try to find any acquaintances of Hahn and continue patrolling the areas. Ottosson asserts there’s a high probability he’ll be drifting around the city. He’s the type. Allan, you’ll have to research where Hahn would hang out.”

“Thanks,” Fredriksson said and pinched the top of his nose.

“How will we proceed with John?” Morenius asked.

“We’ll grill the poker guys, check their alibis, and find Dick Lindström, ‘The Lip’ Rosengren, and Mossa,” Haver said. “There isn’t much else to do. Then there’s a thing I’ve been thinking about. Many individuals have asserted that John was planning something big. What could that have been?”

“An aquarium store, I think,” Berglund said. “Pettersson, whom I talked to, said John had alluded to something like that.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily have had to be a store,” Sammy said. “It could have been something big with poker.”

“Have we checked with John’s wife about the poker playing?”

“Beatrice is there right now,” Ottosson said.

They sat in the kitchen, like last time. Justus had lingered outside the doorway but then had gone to his room. The rap music carried all the way to the kitchen.

“I know it’s too loud,” Berit said, more factually than apologetically, “but I don’t have the heart to ask him to turn it down.”

“How has it been going for him?” Beatrice asked.

“He doesn’t say much. He hasn’t been going to school. Mostly he sits in front of the fish tank.”

“Were they close?”

Berit nodded.

“Very,” she said after a while. “They were always together. If there was anyone who could get John to change his mind, it was Justus.”

“How were things financially? You’ve said before there were hard times.”

Berit looked out the window.

“We had a good life,” she said.

“And lately?”

“I know where you’re going with this. You think John was involved in something illicit, but you’re wrong. He was quiet and sometimes unreachable, but he wasn’t stupid.”

“I’m not implying he was. But I’ll get to the point: it seems John won a great deal of money this fall.”

“What do you mean ‘won’? Horse racing?”

“No, a card game. Poker.”

“Well, I know he played cards sometimes, but it was never for high stakes.”

“What about two hundred thousand,” Beatrice said.

“What? That’s not possible.”

Berit’s surprise seemed genuine. She swallowed and stared at Beatrice in bafflement.

“Not only is it possible, it seems almost certain. We have several witnesses.”

Berit lowered her head and hunched over. One hand fumbled along the tablecloth, fingering the embroidery, in this case a sleigh-riding Santa. The music from Justus’s room had stopped and the apartment was quiet.

“Why didn’t he say anything? Two hundred thousand? That’s a fortune! There has to be some mistake. Who says he won that much?”

“Among others, four people who lost a lot of money that night.”

“And now they’re angry at John and trying to pin this on him.”

“You can choose to see it like that, but I think they’re telling the truth. It’s not to their benefit to lie about being involved in a high-stakes poker game, but they feel pressured now and they’re choosing to come clean. Many of them even have trouble accounting for the money they were betting that night.”

“Was he murdered for the money, then?”

“That’s starting to look like a possibility.”

“Where is the money now?”

“We’ve wondered about that. It may have been stolen in conjunction with the murder or it’s in a bank account somewhere, or else…”

“Somewhere around here,” Berit finished. “But we have no money in this apartment.”

“Have you checked?”

“Checked-well, no, not exactly. But I’ve been putting John’s things away and you and your colleagues have turned the place upside down.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to do that one more time.”

“It’ll be Christmas soon. I’m thinking of Justus. He’s going to need some peace and quiet.”

They kept talking. Beatrice tried to get Berit to reflect back on the fall again, now that she knew he had won so much money. Had he been different in any way? But Berit claimed he had been his usual self.

Beatrice showed her pictures of the men who had participated in the poker game. Berit studied each one carefully but didn’t recognize any of them.

“One of these men could be John’s killer,” she said. Beatrice didn’t reply, just gathered up the pictures.

“Do you mind if I have a word with Justus?” she asked.

“I can’t stop you,” Berit said quietly. “Are you going to show him the pictures as well?”

“Maybe not, but I also want to ask him if he noticed anything different about John in the fall.”

“They mostly talked about their fish.”

Beatrice stood up.

“Do you think he’ll talk to me?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself. One more thing: when did he win the money?”

“In the middle of October,” Beatrice said.

Beatrice knocked carefully and cracked open the bedroom door. Justus was sitting on his bed with his legs pulled up. A book lay open next to him.

“Are you reading?”

Justus didn’t answer; he closed the book and looked at her with an expression Beatrice didn’t quite know how to interpret. She saw distance, not to mention hostility, but also curiosity.

“Can I talk to you for a little bit?”

He nodded and she sat down on his desk chair.

“How are things?”

Justus shrugged.

“Do you know anything that could help to explain why your dad died?”

“Like what?”

“Maybe he said something, something you didn’t think was important at the time but that could help explain all this. It could be something as little as the name of an acquaintance he thought was acting crazy.”

“He never said anything like that.”

“Sometimes grown-ups want to tell you something but they don’t manage to get it out, if you know what I mean.”

Beatrice waited, giving him time. She got up and closed the door before she continued.

“Did he ever give you money?”

“A monthly allowance.”

“How much is that?”

“Five hundred.”

“Is that enough? What do you buy?”

“Clothes, records, sometimes a game.”

“Did you ever get a little more?”

“Yeah, if I needed something and they could spare it.”

“Did you ever get extra money this fall? Did it seem like your dad had more money than usual?”

“I know where you’re going with this. You think Dad stole some money, but he worked for it like everybody else.”

“He was unemployed.”

“I know. Sagge was the one who ruined everything. He didn’t get that Dad was the best welder he’d ever had.”

“Did you sometimes visit him down in the shop?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you know how to weld?”

“It’s really hard,” Justus said emphatically.

“You tried it?”

He nodded.

“The part about Sagge ruining everything-how do you mean that?”

“He made Dad unemployed.”

“Did it make your father anxious?”

“It made him…”

“Angry?”

Justus nodded.

“What did you used to talk about?”

“The fish.”

“I know nothing about aquariums and fish-and I’ve never seen a tank as big as yours.”

“It’s the biggest one in town. Dad was really good at it. He sold fish to other people and sometimes he was invited to give talks on cichlids.”

“Where did he get invited?”

“Meetings, miniconferences. There’s a national organization for people who have cichlids.”

“Did he travel a lot?”

“He was supposed to go to Malmö next year. Last spring he went to Gothenburg.”

“Do you take care of the aquarium now?”

“Dad showed me how to take care of it.”

“You’re in eighth grade now. What do you plan on doing when you graduate?”

Beatrice realized her mistake as soon as she had mentioned school, judging by Justus’s expression. He shrugged.

“Maybe you can work with aquariums,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“Didn’t your dad ever think about working full-time with the fish?”

Justus didn’t answer. His initial grumpiness had been replaced by a kind of passive sadness. The thoughts about his father were like logs on their way downstream that were snagging and accumulating in a narrow passage. Beatrice wanted to coax him forward but didn’t want the dam to burst. In her experience, it only created more resistance down the line. Right now she wanted to establish a line of communication, establish trust, push those logs along one by one.

“Is it all right if I come to you with questions about aquariums? In my line of work, and as a mom, I get asked a lot of questions. But there’s no way I can know everything about everything.”

Justus gave her a knowing look that unsettled her as if he saw right through her.

She got up and opened the door.

“One more thing,” she said before she left. “You should know that everyone we’ve talked to had only good things to say about your dad.”

His eyes met hers for a millisecond before she closed the door.