Aaron Elkins: Where there's a will

“Mr. Torkelsson, how do you know all this? Were you there?”

“No, only the three of them. But Dagmar told us later. Torkel, too, although he was barely coherent by the time we arrived.”

Dagmar again, thought Fukida. The only living eyewitness. Only she was no longer living.

Other than the fact that Inge and Hedwig, with Felix’s help, had loaded Magnus’s body into a pickup truck and taken it to the hay barn before they lopped off his toes and set the fire, the remainder of the story-how Torkel had been desperate to leave, how they’d gotten him to the airport, etc.-fit perfectly with what Inge and Dagmar had told him the day before.

Which hardly proved it was true, but Fukida was increasingly inclined to accept this latest retelling. The gun’s neglected condition-rusted, loaded with the wrong bullets-made the idea of an accidental killing highly believable. More than that, if there was anything self-serving about this version, he couldn’t see it. Telling the story opened them all up to a ton of legal problems, some of them criminal.

Still, there was a lot about it that didn’t compute. “Look, if it happened the way you said, if there weren’t any hitmen to worry about, what the hell was Torkel so desperate about?”

“He was desperate because he figured it would look like murder and he couldn’t face the idea of jail-or even of a trial-not at his age. Dagmar kept telling him not to do it, that if he ran he’d really look guilty.” Felix shook his head. “But you couldn’t reason with him.”

“So who came up with the idea of switching identities?”

“That was Torkel, but, you see, the idea wasn’t to switch identities, not at first. He wasn’t interested in being Magnus. He just wanted to make it look as if he was dead. He figured that’d make it a lot harder for the police to find him, since they wouldn’t be looking for him.”

“It wouldn’t make it any easier,” Fukida agreed.

“So we all went along with that. But then we started talking. If you people bought the story that it was Torkel’s body in the barn, you were going to want to know what happened to Magnus… for instance, where was he? And how the hell were we going to handle that? So we started throwing around ideas and the best thing we came up with-I honestly forget who came up with it first; Hedwig, maybe, or maybe it was me-was to pretty much tell the truth… with a twist. One brother got killed, the other one flew away. Only we’d reverse them.”

Fukida nodded. “Since Magnus was now Torkel, Torkel would become Magnus.”

“That’s about it.”

“I’m surprised he went for it. That’s a hell of a decision, to become somebody else. Especially your own brother.”

“Yeah, but you see, it wasn’t that cut-and-dried, Sergeant. At that point nobody was thinking about who Torkel would become. We were just thinking about the story we were going to tell the police. Anyway, all he was interested in was getting out of there and covering his tracks, so he jumped right on the idea and we all went along with that, too. After that-”

“Why?”

Felix was startled. “Uh… why?”

“Yeah, why’d you all go along? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’d all come off filthy rich if everybody thought Magnus was the last one alive?”

For the first time Felix showed a flash of anger. “In the first place, none of us are ‘filthy rich’-”

“Don’t yell. It screws up the recorder. It also irritates me.”

“I’m sorry.” He lowered his voice to what he thought was a whisper. “In the second place, Torkel wasn’t supposed to get himself killed in a plane crash. He was supposed to be back in touch with us as soon as he could. The idea was that I was going to explain things and straighten everything out with you guys and with the prosecuting attorney, and then, assuming I could get it all taken care of, he was supposed to come back and be Torkel again.” He folded his arms and glared at Fukida. “So you want to tell me how was that going to make us filthy rich? I think you know what Torkel was going to leave us-zilch.”

Fukida responded equally heatedly. “Yeah, right, but then, after he didn’t show up, and you all tossed things around some more, you figured, well, why not just leave things the way they are? I mean, it was a lot simpler than stirring everything up again, and you’d all come out of it a lot better, and who would it hurt? Except for that seamen’s home, of course.”

Felix sagged, unfolded his arms, and dropped his eyes. “I guess that’s about right,” he said wearily. “I’d want to put it a little more… positively than that, but… that’s about right. We acted in our own selfish interests. And we broke the law.”

We’re getting there now, Fukida thought. Maybe not quite the whole truth yet, but close, and getting closer. “Listen, Mr. Torkelsson, you might want to have a lawyer of your own here before we talk much more. I don’t want to be accused of-”

“No lawyer,” Felix said firmly. “Unless I’m under arrest.”

Fukida shook his head. “Not at the moment.”

Felix laughed and relaxed. “All right, what else do you need to know? And if there’s really any coffee in that machine, I’d appreciate some.”

“You’re a braver man than I am,” Fukida said, walking with him to the break room.

Felix put in his dollar and punched buttons-two sugars, two creams (no wonder he was able to drink the stuff)-and waited for the cup to fill with the resultant slush.

“So tell me,” Fukida said, “who came up with the idea of these mysterious hitmen? You?”

Felix laughed. “No, you.” Standing at the machine, taking short, rapid gulps of the too-hot coffee, he explained.

When Dagmar had first talked to the police about what “Magnus” had supposedly said on the telephone, she’d used the word they -“they” killed Torkel, “they” were coming after him-but it was just a figure of speech; she hadn’t meant to suggest that there was more than one person. But when the autopsy was performed and two different-caliber bullets were found in the body, the police had understandably taken the “they” seriously. With both bullets right through the heart, the leap to “professional, anonymous hitmen” had been easy and logical. Of course, the family had embraced the idea as a godsend that temporarily took the pressure off Torkel. Later, after he hadn’t been heard from again and was presumed lost, it had simply been easier all around to stick with it than to change their story. And so the police had spent months on a pointless wild goose chase.

A royal screw-up, Fukida thought, shaking his head. That was the term for it, all right.

Back in the interrogation room, he had Felix repeat the story for the recorder. “That about it?” Felix said when he’d finished.

They were both getting tired now. Fukida’s sinuses ached and Felix looked as if he might be thinking that the coffee hadn’t been such a hot idea after all.

“Almost. Let’s go back to the meeting with Dagmar the day she was killed. You said you all wanted her to lie and say Torkel murdered Magnus?”

Felix nodded. “Right.”

“I don’t get it. What was that about?”

“The wills again, the goddamn wills. See, if the truth came out-that it was an accident-then Torkel, as the last survivor, would be the one with the valid will, right? And the seamen’s home would be the big beneficiary. But if Torkel killed Magnus-murdered him-then-”

“Then Magnus’s will would be the one that counted, because you can’t inherit from someone you murder-so the money couldn’t go to Torkel in the first place, and he couldn’t leave it to the home. It’d go straight from Magnus to you.”