The Ravens (Minnesota Trilogy)

by Vidar Sundstøl

  20

  INSTEAD OF DRIVING STRAIGHT TO DULUTH to visit his mother, as he’d planned, Lance headed north again. When he reached the turnoff for Baraga Cross Road, he exited the highway and drove down to the parking lot, where he stopped the car and got out. It was early afternoon, but the sun was already low in the sky. He put on the snowshoes he’d bought in Ely, climbed over the snowbank, and headed into the birch forest. After a few minutes he caught sight of the cross between the tree trunks. In the deep snow it looked shorter than he remembered, but that didn’t make it any less impressive. It seemed as if all lines in the landscape met at the juncture of those two axes. Lance went over to the cross, took off his right glove, and pressed the palm of his hand against the ice-cold granite. He’d imagined that he’d feel something, some sort of contact with the cross and this place, but all he felt was the cold. He could hear muted, hollow sounds coming from rippling water. At this point the Cross River flowed into the lake, but not even a drop of water was visible.

  The expanse of rocks sloping down toward the lake was covered in a thick snowdrift, but only the very top layer was loose and powdery. The snow underneath was packed solid and able to bear Lance’s weight, as long as it was evenly distributed on the long snowshoes that he wore. Without looking back, he kept walking.

  After a while he noticed that the ground underfoot began to change. Bluish-gray ice seemed to stretch out forever in front of him, broken only by long, windswept streaks of snow, which indicated the direction in which the wind usually blew out here. The ice itself was not a uniform color, varying instead between a cold gray, which comprised most of the ice, to patches of a darker gray tone; that was the ice that scared him a bit. He couldn’t possibly be in any danger, since the temp had hovered around minus twenty for several weeks, and the entire lake was frozen over. Yet there was something about those darker patches that gave him a feeling that he was uncomfortably close to the water and its vast depths.

  Lance took off the snowshoes, carrying them as he continued on. With only his boots on his feet, it felt like walking across a parquet floor, even on the darker spots. But they still scared him. In an attempt to conquer his fear, he stopped on a dark patch and proceeded to jump up and down. Each time he landed, the ice emitted a sound, as if a giant were flicking his finger at a delicate crystal glass. A clear, resonating tone that shot across the ice and disappeared. He knelt down on the snowshoes and then leaned forward to press his forehead to the ice. How thick could it be? Probably no more than one or two feet of ice separated him from the dark embrace of Lake Superior. Wearing these clothes and heavy boots, he would sink slowly but irrevocably down through the water until his lifeless body ended up on the bottom. Wasn’t that how it would happen? Or did a corpse float back up to the surface after only a short time? In that case, he would ram the ice overhead and then sink down again. In the long run, he would undoubtedly lie on the bottom. What did it look like down there? Old trees, perhaps; the thick trunks of pine trees from long before the first white settlers arrived here. Giants that were thousands of years old, dark and sleek, well preserved in the nutrient-stripped water of the lake. And among the ancient trees the forest’s sheriff.

  It was the cold that finally forced him back on his feet. When he turned around, a gleeful shiver passed through his body. He couldn’t see where the white lake met the white land—everything was white. But he could glimpse the cross like a tiny dark speck amid all the white. With some reluctance he started back toward the cross.

  21

  SHE COULD PHONE, but that would give the impression that she was desperate for a visit, and she wasn’t. Her biggest concern was whether he was all right. Something was making her uneasy, though she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Just that it had something to do with Lance.

  She put down her knitting and slowly stood up, her knees aching. Then she went out to the corridor. Lakeview Nursing Home was a place for senior citizens who had good health insurance, for instance, from the retirement package of a deceased spouse. So it was no accident that the widows of four police officers lived here. This was the place for those who could no longer live in their own homes, or who chose not to. Inga Hansen was not one of the residents who had to live here; she had chosen to move in instead of continuing to live alone with her bad knees in the big house on Fifth Avenue.

  A staff member waved to her from the kitchen as she passed the open doorway. From the smell she knew they would be having fish for dinner. The food at Lakeview was good, and she didn’t have to cook for herself. All her adult life she’d cooked meals for the three hungry men in her family at least three times each day, while she herself had barely had time to sit down and take a few bites before she had to clear the table and do the dishes. So why would she want more of the same in her old age? No, she was not about to make even a sandwich unless she absolutely had to.

  At the end of the long corridor she paused under the portrait of Albert Ringstrom, the founder of Lakeview. Why exactly was she out here in the hall? This happened to her frequently. Here she stood again, with no idea where she was going. Had she intended to take a walk? No, that couldn’t be it. She wasn’t dressed for the wintry cold.

  Not wanting to draw attention, she continued a bit hesitantly to the next corridor leading to the other wing of the building, which she rarely visited. She had the impression that those who lived there were in failing health and would no longer be venturing anywhere at all. While she herself . . . well, where exactly was she going? She had no reason to be in this part of the building, at any rate. Even so, she continued her slow plodding along the deserted corridor. Here too she could smell dinner, but where was the kitchen? She felt like she was on a little field trip and wished she could find someone to talk to, preferably the kitchen staff. But all the doors she passed were closed, and she couldn’t bring herself to open any of them.

  Finally she caught sight of a door that was ajar. Maybe there was someone in there she could talk to. It would be nice to sit down and have a cup of coffee. But when she went over to the door, she saw that it led to yet another corridor. The smell of food seemed to be coming from there, so that meant there had to be people around. Inga walked down the next corridor, which looked exactly like all the others. The same green linoleum that always felt a bit sticky under the soles of her shoes and made a faint sound every time she lifted her feet. And here was the same portrait of Albert Ringstrom.

  Her knees were starting to ache again; it didn’t take much for them to give her trouble. Suddenly she realized that she had an acute need to sit down, but there wasn’t so much as a straight-backed chair in the long corridor, and the closed doors were no help either. She didn’t want to intrude on someone else’s private space.

  Why had she started on this long walk in the first place? Something about Lance? She’d been thinking about him right before she left her room; she was sure about that. She didn’t need to use the toilet, did she? She paused for a moment. No, everything was fine. Regardless of the reason, she was standing halfway along a corridor that she’d never seen before, although it was identical to the one outside her own room. And her knees were hurting so bad that she couldn’t even imagine making it back to her room without first taking a rest.

  She stopped outside a door and looked around, but there was no one in sight. Then she hesitantly lifted her hand and knocked. No response from inside. Again she knocked, as loudly as she dared, but still nothing happened. Slowly Inga pressed down the handle and opened the door.

  It was a janitor’s closet. She was so relieved to find the room deserted, but with the comforting smell of soap and scouring powder. She was surrounded by brooms, mops, plastic buckets, rubber gloves, scrub brushes, and dust rags. She found the wall switch and turned on the light. Then she closed the door, and she was alone in the small space. In a corner stood a single stool that the cleaning lady probably used when she needed to take a break. Inga went over and finally was able to sit down and rest.

  She
leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

  22

  THE NEXT DAY in between classes Chrissy phoned Lance to ask whether they could drive to Grand Portage and visit “Jimmy’s grandfather,” as she called him.

  “Do you know Willy?” asked Lance.

  “Do I have to know him if I want to talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “Good. But it’s a little hard for me to get away. I mean, you saw for yourself what things are like.”

  Lance could hear that she was on the verge of tears.

  “Yeah. Not the best situation.”

  “I told them I’ve got dance practice at school tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather go see Jimmy and Mary if you’re planning to go to Grand Portage?”

  “No.”

  “But why Willy?”

  “I’ve thought a lot about what you said about my great-great-grandmother. That she was Ojibwe.”

  “And what did that make you think about?” he asked.

  “Just that I’d like to talk to someone who’s Ojibwe,” said Chrissy.

  “I’ve already told him about it, and he wasn’t particularly interested. It’s pretty common up here.”

  “Oh, okay.” She sounded disappointed.

  “But of course we could still take a drive and go visit him,” Lance hurried to say.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Shall I pick you up in Two Harbors?”

  WHEN THEY PASSED SILVER CLIFF, which was where he’d seen Swamper Caribou for the first time, Lance reached across his niece to open the glove compartment. There lay the gun. Without comment, he took out two little heart-shaped chocolates and then closed the glove compartment. Chrissy’s expression didn’t change. Maybe she hadn’t noticed the gun, or maybe she thought it was normal for a forest cop to be armed, even when driving his own car.

  “Want a chocolate?” he asked.

  “Dove?”

  They both took off the foil wrappers that covered the chocolate hearts.

  “You have to read what it says inside,” Lance told her.

  She smoothed out the foil and looked at the words.

  “Oh, right,” she snorted.

  “What does it say?”

  “ ‘A smile is the best workout.’ ”

  Lance looked at the deathly pale girl with the black makeup and laughed.

  “Cute,” she said. “So, what does yours say?”

  He held up the foil wrapper but had to read the small text several times before he could make out the words.

  “What does it say?” his niece asked again.

  “It says, ‘Love is for those who are tough.’ ”

  Chrissy tried to suppress a giggle.

  Lance sank into his own thoughts. If Andy really was the murderer, why would he be afraid to let Chrissy go out alone? It didn’t make sense. According to Tammy, her husband’s protective behavior had started when the body was discovered near Baraga’s Cross. And she couldn’t fathom why he was still acting like that after the killer was arrested. If Andy merely wished to protect his daughter from a murderer on the loose, it would mean two things. Number one: Andy couldn’t possibly be the killer. And two: He had to be aware that Lenny Diver wasn’t either. But Lance couldn’t convince himself of this. There had to be another reason why Andy would hardly let Chrissy leave the house anymore. Then Lance remembered that father and daughter had come home together in the afternoon on the day after the murder. Andy had picked up Chrissy at the home of a girlfriend in Duluth, yet Chrissy had said that she’d spent the night of the murder at the cabin on Lost Lake. Maybe she’d gone back to Duluth with her friend the next day, so that Andy could pick her up as agreed, without realizing that the girls had spent the night somewhere else. That seemed plausible. And that would also mean that Andy thought it was okay to lie about having been at the cabin. Lance based all of these speculations on information that he’d gleaned from Tammy. He believed her because she was the only one of the three who had been home on the night of the murder. What Lance hadn’t thought about before was that he had to take her word for it.

  “All that stuff yesterday with Andy,” said Lance. “What was that about, really?”

  Chrissy uttered a sound that was a combination of a sigh and a whimper.

  “Dad is fucking crazy,” she said through clenched teeth. “He won’t let me do anything. I’ve got no freedom at all. It’s like living in a prison.”

  “But you’ve gone out driving with me.”

  “That’s because he was away, or because Mom had a huge argument with him first, like when we went to the poetry reading the other night.”

  “So Andy didn’t want to let you go to the reading either?”

  “If it were up to Dad, I’d spend the whole time sitting in my room.”

  “But why is he acting this way?”

  “God, it’s so stupid.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  “He thinks I’m running around with boys.”

  “Well, aren’t you? You’re seventeen, after all.”

  “He’s thinks I’m the kind of girl who . . .”

  “What?”

  “He thinks I’m a whore!” she shouted and then hid her face in her hands.

  “Now come on, honey,” said Lance, shocked. “What are you talking about?”

  Chrissy began sobbing, and the sound was heartrending. After a moment it became almost a wail. When Lance saw a parking space, he pulled off the road and stopped. Then he got out of the car, just to get away from the howling. He quickly realized that they were at exactly the same place where he and Inga had stopped last summer. That time he’d seen Swamper Caribou sitting at the water’s edge, wearing the worn, round hat on his head, with his knees tucked up under his chin. That was the second time Lance saw him. The medicine man had sat there, staring across the Kitchi-Gami, the Big Water, as the lake was called in his language.

  Lance couldn’t imagine that it would ever be summer again. Winter no longer felt like a season of the year but rather a place from which he could never escape.

  Lance heard Chrissy open the car door and come toward him across the creaking snow. For a moment they stood side by side, looking straight ahead without saying a word. He thought about all the times he had played with his niece when she was little. Chrissy had been the closest he’d come to having a child until Jimmy was born.

  “How I hate it,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  “All this.”

  Her small voice defied the vast space around them.

  23

  LANCE WAS EATING A COOKIE that reminded him of Jimmy’s first year and the sweet smell of his hair.

  “Here, have something to drink,” said Willy, pouring Coke into the only glass on the table.

  Chrissy gave him a strained smile and took a sip. Lance saw her looking at the old dream catcher that hung underneath the photos of Willy Dupree’s parents.

  “A dream catcher,” said Willy.

  She blushed, as if caught in the act.

  “It was made more than a hundred years ago, for a little child who wasn’t sleeping well,” Willy explained. “And it’s been in the family ever since.”

  “One of the things that gave Nanette’s Ojibwe heritage away was the fact that she made a dream catcher for Thormod Olson,” said Lance. “He was having nightmares and screaming so loud that the children couldn’t sleep. So she made an asa . . . asabi . . .”

  “Asabikeshiinh,” said Willy. “A web spun to catch bad dreams.”

  “Does it work?” asked Chrissy.

  “What do you think?” Willy challenged her.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  Chrissy paused to consider.

  “I think it does.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Lance.

  “That’s just what I think.”

  Lance wondered whether Willy actually believed in such things: dream catchers, the Big Dream, the ghost of Swamper Car
ibou . . . although the latter was something Lance himself believed in. Or did he? Well, he believed Andy was gay, so why not believe in ghosts?

  “Oh, how I wish I had a dream catcher,” exclaimed Chrissy. Her shyness seemed to have vanished. “Not one of those trashy things that tourists buy, but one that—”

  “One that works?” said Willy.

  “Uh-huh. Does anyone still make real ones?” she asked eagerly.

  “There are still some people who live according to the old beliefs. I’m sure I could get you a real dream catcher if you really want one.”

  “What do you mean by a real one?” asked Lance.

  “One that’s made by someone who has contact with the spirit world.”

  Lance gave his ex-father-in-law a skeptical look.

  “Or who at least thinks he does,” the old man added.

  “Would you really do that for me?” Chrissy seemed about to take the old man up on his offer.

  “Of course.”

  “Promise?” she insisted.

  “Yes, I promise.”

  Lance noticed that his niece was looking at Willy with admiration, and it occurred to him that the old man was undoubtedly savoring the situation.

  “Do you think it’s strange that we have Ojibwe blood?” she asked.

  “Well, you have beautiful Indian eyes. But when it comes to Lance, it’s a little harder to believe,” said the old man, smiling slyly.

  “They’re just colored contact lenses,” said Chrissy. “I actually have blue eyes, like Lance.”

  “Why did you decide to change the color?” asked Willy.

  Chrissy looked down, as if embarrassed.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  “But I have a good reason. A very good reason,” she hurried to add.

  “What did Andy and Tammy say when you came home wearing brown contacts?” asked Lance.

  Chrissy rolled her eyes.

  “I’m sure you can imagine. Dad went ballistic.”

  “But you stood your ground?” said Lance.