Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries) (13 page)

Thor’s adoptive father looked straight at him as if reading his mind and said, “Ah. The joys of fatherhood.”

“Yes. That is true.”

“Problem is that sometimes the joy gets forced on you.”

“That’s true too.”

“Look at me. Three years after we got married I finally fell for the daddy trap that she had carefully prepared and laid out for me months if not years before. I should’ve seen it coming from the first year of our marriage when she released her second husband from financial maintenance for their son.

“My mother warned me over and over to be careful. She told me over and over that it was a trap . . . a set-up.

“I stupidly thought she had released her second husband from his financial obligations because the man was a deadbeat who spent most of his time unemployed and drinking after she left him. I should have seen it coming when she got the ex-husband to release all of his parental rights to the boy in exchange for being released from the child support.”

“What could you do?”

“Leave her. Kick her lazy lying cheating butt out of the house. Instead I stayed and she worked up a big production for me every day about the boy growing up all alone in the world without a father. Then at night she would love my brains out. She knows how to work a man. I stupidly caved in and adopted the boy. The loving stopped of course.

“I adopted the boy despite the fact that my parents warned me a million times not to do it. They begged me. They showed me how much of my income would disappear into child support if she was to ever divorce me down the road.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That she’d never divorce me. Yes. . . I knew that she loved me working and bringing her money while she did nothing at home other than sleeping with other men and partying with her girlfriends. Two months after I adopt the boy she divorces me and tells the court that I’m ‘
controlling and abusive
’. Ain’t that something?”

“The pot calling the kettle black.”

“Yes. Ain’t that something? She dumps the kid on me during the divorce . . . I think that’s when she started dating you. Then after she moves in with you she takes the kid back . . . which means that I had to start paying her child support again.”

“I’m sorry. This is all so much to think about. I didn’t know about this situation with her. We should talk more from now on.”

“Yes. By the way . . . it kills me that she always brings him back here to me with no change of clothes. I now have to buy him clothes for the weekend. Just what the heck do you guys do with all the money that I have to pay every month now that she has custody and I only have visitation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the big fat check I send your wife every month for my son’s support!”

“That’s her department. I don’t see any of it,” he said. “How much do you pay her?”

When he heard the enormous sum his rage almost exploded that day at the restaurant and the drive back home. But to his credit he did not say anything at all to her about how he had discovered that she was hiding and secretly pocketing all that child support money while she made
him
buy
all
of the boy’s clothes and toys and food and you name it.

“So,” said the ex-husband, “do you see why I’m angry that she sent the boy here today with no extra clothes for the weekend? Not even pyjamas . . . now I have to buy him more clothes.”

“I see your point.”

“Do you? You know . . . I once went to see her . . . and begged her to
please
lower the child support payments because I had to help my widowed sister in New York City who had cancer. My sick sister had five children to care for . . . and I desperately needed to send her and the five children money.

“What does your wife do?

“She smiles and says yes . . .that she’ll gladly go to her lawyer and ask him to lower the monthly payment . . . then . . . an hour later the police are at my office asking about me ‘
harassing and threatening
’ her.”

“Not good.”

“There’s more. Much more. A year after we got married she went back to school to get her undergraduate degree. She had me pay her tuition. I never got to go to the university and get
my
degree because I paid for her schooling. She always told me she’d pay me back once she got to teach but the crazy broad could never get full-time work at teaching because all of the teachers and principals and staff soon got to hate the Bossy Queen Bee.”

“She told me that getting a full-time teaching job at an elementary school is not easy . . . but rather difficult.”

“Oh really? I don’t think it’s
that
difficult since I later found out that she finally got a full-time job offer to teach.”

“She never told me.”

“Why should she? That’s when you proposed to her. She turned down the job offer as soon as you slipped that big fat engagement ring on her finger. The meal-ticket of her newest Prince Charming had arrived to rescue her from working at McDonald’s and at a school . . . and so . . . she traded me the old beat-up model for the higher income model you offered and now provide her.”

~ ~ ~

The seventh big lie. For that he slowly electrocutes and burns off her left thumb with a live electric wire wrapped like a ring around the base of her thumb.

“I’m not big into material things. I don’t like showing off. Hate it. My family is my life. That’s all I care about.”

Was that another well-placed hook into him who was so careful with his hard-earned money?

She said she wasn’t big into material things and yet she made it abundantly clear that she wanted a big fat diamond from him for the engagement ring and the wedding ring. He remembered how she had spent a small fortune on clothes at H & M shortly after claiming that she had ‘
lost
’ the engagement ring. Of course he had to buy her a second engagement ring.

She doesn’t like showing off but she forced him into an expensive wedding on a private island in Greece. She then pushed him into buying her the red Audi TT sports car as a wedding gift with the car title in her name only.

She says she hates showing off and loves family above
everything
else and yet she abandoned him and everyone else so she could spend 8 to 10 hours a day every day of the week at the gym training for bodybuilding championships. During that time he had to cook and care for her son from another marriage
and
for his son from a previous marriage because she simply refused to do any other work other than working on the sculpting of her body.

Is that when her anger started getting out of control?

Did she take steroids?

After all they are well-known for causing uncontrollable rage as a side-effect.

So . . . did she take steroids?

Probably.

For sure she took those fat-burning pills that acted like amphetamines and left her paranoid and wide awake night after night. That’s also when she started hanging around all these female muscle-building freaks at the gym. They were such disgusting repulsive freaks. The sight of women ogling each other was sickening to him especially when the women lathered themselves in oil and then slowly flexed different muscle groups such as their stomach muscles or butts. Their rippling muscles looked like oiled snakes moving under their skin.

She hates showing off but she made him pay for her giant breast implants after she quit bodybuilding.

Her family is her life but she dumped their children at the gym’s daycare so she could spend most of the day doing whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted.

~ ~ ~

The eighth big lie. For that he chews off her left index finger.

Or should he buy a pet rat to chew her finger off by putting the rat into a tube and then lighting a blowtorch behind the rat and letting the rat chew through her bone and flesh?

Or should he use the rat to chew through her nose and cheeks or through her ribs or stomach?

The eighth lie was one of her worst and most damaging lies. She trapped him forever with that lie. She would have her hand inside his pockets for the next twenty years paying child support if they divorced.

The eighth lie had been so so clever.

“I can’t have more children. The doctor said my tubes and uterus are scarred beyond repair from a bad infection I got from my IUD . . . my intrauterine device almost killed me. Anyway I take the pill just to make sure.”

Her pregnancy almost two years ago left him stunned and in a daze for weeks. He was beyond surprised because she made him think that there was absolutely no way that they were going to have children. She often left the circular birth control pill dispenser on the bathroom counter so that he was sure to see it.

When he no longer saw the pill dispenser on the bathroom she told him:

“Oh honey . . . I forgot to tell you . . . I switched to Implanon . . . it’s even more effective than the pill . . . the nurse put the little plastic rod in my arm a week ago . . . just under my skin . . . kind of hurt a little . . . the slow and steady drug release lasts three years. We won’t have to worry anymore about my forgetting to take the pill. Now you take your clothes off and come into bed right now so we can celebrate my little rod with your big rod!”

The baby.

She changed even more after the baby than she did with the bodybuilding. After the baby she had no patience and lots of explosive temper with my son and her son. The baby turned her world upside down. She was no longer in control. The baby controlled her and everyone else.

Why was she so angry about the baby?

Aren’t babies supposed to change you from selfish to altruistic?

Aren’t babies supposed to make you grow into a better adult?

No. Not with her. Her moods only got worse and worse.

Was it postpartum depression as she claimed or was that just another lie to avoid responsibility?

Right after having the baby is when she started getting on the Internet for hours and hooking up with all of her old boyfriends. The worst was finding out with his key logging software that she put herself out on many websites for singles and for people looking for
relationships
. Trolling for men hour after hour. Sending them lewd disgusting messages and nude pictures.

Why have a baby if you start acting like you hate the baby?

Her moods. They left no room for error. She got nasty even with her son and of course with my son.

Should I have let her be so strict with the two boys especially with my son?

Who wouldn’t have let her have her way if they had heard her arguing
all
the time about disciplining the boys especially my son?

He decided then and there that the torture sessions will include him forcing caustic lye down her throat to let her feel what it was like hearing her rant on and on every day about how she was an
educator
—a trained professional who knew how to
handle
children.

~ ~ ~