The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy)

by Vidar Sundstøl

“Is this something that’s especially difficult for you to talk about?” he asked.

  Hauglie raised his head, sniffling. Then attempted a smile. “No. The whole thing is just so . . . it’s all so . . . ”

  “All right,” said Lecuyer. “So you make plans for this big canoeing adventure. And you go ahead with things, without encountering any major setbacks. But then you want to go canoeing on Lake Superior before you leave, right?”

  Hauglie nodded.

  “Let’s see now. Today is Friday, the twenty-seventh. And this was on . . . Monday, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The twenty-third, right? Monday the twenty-third?”

  “Yes,” Hauglie repeated in a low voice.

  “And what happens? What do you do on that Monday?”

  “We check in at the Whispering Pines. Then we rent a canoe and go out on the lake for a while. When we get back to the motel, we decide to make one last canoe trip on the following day. One last overnight outing in Minnesota.”

  “But before we get to that,” said Lecuyer, “who did you have contact with at Whispering Pines?”

  “Nobody.”

  “But you must have talked to someone. What about when you checked in, for example?”

  “The desk clerk was really the only person we talked to.”

  “What can you tell us about him?”

  “The clerk? Nothing. What about him?”

  “Did he say or do anything unusual? Was there anything special about him?”

  Hauglie shook his head. “Nothing at all. He was a completely ordinary motel clerk.”

  “Not too nosy, or anything?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “And you never got the impression that he was keeping his eye on you?”

  “No. Why are you asking all these questions about the motel clerk?”

  “Fine. Let’s go on. The next day you set off for your last canoeing trip. On Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of June. What time of day did you leave?”

  “We checked out around noon. We left a lot of our stuff there and booked a room for Wednesday night. But we . . . we never got to use it. Where are our things, by the way?”

  “We have them. We’ll be going through everything, but you’ll get all of your belongings back. I promise you that. Let’s not think about that right now. Try to focus on Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of June. It’s about midday, and you and Georg are checking out of the Whispering Pines Motel. What do you do then?”

  “We get in the canoe and paddle north along the shore.”

  “Does anything special happen along the way? Do you run into any kind of problems?”

  “No. Everything is great, just like the rest of our vacation.”

  For a moment no one spoke, and then Eirik Nyland took over. “Did you go ashore anywhere?” he asked.

  “Yes, at a couple of places. Just to take a break. We stretched out on the rocks and relaxed.”

  “Did you meet anyone when you were taking these breaks?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone at all? When you went ashore, I mean.”

  “No, not a soul.”

  “When you made camp . . . Why did you choose that particular spot?”

  “Well, we just thought it was about time we pitched our tent. And besides, we’d noticed the cross. There’s a big cross there, on the point. We thought there was something special about it. Something appealing. We’re both . . . we were both Christians, so it seemed right to set up our camp near the cross.”

  “Baraga’s Cross,” said Lecuyer.

  “What?”

  “That’s what it’s called. Baraga’s Cross.”

  “Oh.”

  “What time was it when you went ashore?” Nyland continued. “It was between seven thirty and eight, I think.”

  “Okay. So you go ashore near Baraga’s Cross,” said Lecuyer. “What happens next?”

  “We set up camp. Pitch our tent.”

  “By the way, why didn’t you set up camp right next to the cross? Your tent was a couple of hundred yards away.”

  “Well . . . you’re only allowed to set up camp in designated areas. Places that are marked with a sign. They’re all on the map too. But there wasn’t any place like that nearby. Since we were camping illegally, we pitched our tent inside the dense birch forest instead of out there, near the cross, where somebody might see it.”

  “As it happens, someone did notice your tent,” said Lecuyer. “The police officer who found you works for the U.S. Forest Service. He came out there because of a tip they’d received about an illegal campsite. Apparently somebody saw the tent from a boat out on the lake. So what did the two of you do for the rest of the evening?”

  “We set up the tent. Then we cooked dinner and ate it.”

  “Did you drink any alcohol?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. A bottle of red wine. We’d bought the wine to share on a special occasion. And since it was our last night in Minnesota . . . But we didn’t drink the whole bottle.”

  “So the two of you weren’t drunk?”

  “No, far from it.”

  “Okay, then. What did you do after dinner?”

  “We decided to take the canoe out on the lake again.”

  “Really? Wasn’t it dark?”

  “Sure, but the moonlight was beautiful.”

  “What time was this?”

  “From ten to eleven thirty, I think. Plus or minus a little.”

  “So you went back to your campsite at around eleven thirty?”

  “About that time.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “We went to bed.”

  “Did you fall asleep immediately, or did you lie awake for a while?”

  “We lay awake and finished off the red wine. Then we must have fallen asleep . . . because when I woke up, Georg wasn’t there.”

  “There’s something I’ve been wondering about,” said Eirik Nyland. “You were naked when you were found. The body of Georg Lofthus was too. Did you sleep together naked?”

  “We didn’t sleep together. We each had our own sleeping bag. But it’s true that we usually slept in the nude. We’d been best friends since grade school. We swam naked and we slept naked. Everything was completely . . . relaxed between the two of us.”

  “Up to the time when you fell asleep,” said Bob Lecuyer, “did you hear or see anyone else at any time? I’m sure you realize that this is particularly important.”

  “No. We could faintly hear the traffic up on the highway. Just a distant rushing sound from the cars. But nothing else. No voices or anything like that.”

  “So nothing suspicious happened before you both fell asleep that night?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Tell us about what happened when you woke up,” said Nyland. “Do you know what time it was?”

  “It was a few minutes past five. I remember that clearly. I woke up because I needed to take a piss. When I saw that Georg was gone, I thought he must have left the tent for the same reason. I put on my shoes and went outside.”

  “But otherwise you were naked?” said Lecuyer.

  “Yes. I just had on my shoes. After I took a leak, I stood there waiting for Georg to show up. It was already daylight, so he might have gone a short distance into the woods. But he didn’t come back. So I started shouting his name. That didn’t do any good either. Then I walked farther into the woods . . . not far, maybe twenty or thirty yards . . . and that’s where I found Georg. That’s where he was lying . . .”

  Hauglie was staring straight ahead, without saying another word. It looked like he was running out of steam.

  “Can you tell us specifically what you did when you found Georg?” said Nyland. “Both Lecuyer and I know what Lofthus looked like when you found him. We realize that this is extremely stressful for you. Let’s just focus on
your physical movements. What exactly did you do?”

  “I lay down next to him.”

  “You lay down on the ground?”

  “Yes. I lay down and put my arms around him. Talked to him. He was my best friend. The best friend I’ve ever had. I couldn’t just let him lie there, all alone in the woods . . . in a foreign country.”

  “But at some point you must have gone over to the cross,” Nyland continued.

  “Yes. It suddenly occurred to me that somebody had done this to Georg. So then I . . . panicked. I was completely terrified. And I just started running.”

  “You ran straight to the cross?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And that’s where you stayed?”

  “I’m a Christian. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. It was the only place that I felt safe. The cross protected me. I firmly believe that. Otherwise I’d be dead too.”

  “Did you stay sitting there next to the cross the whole time until the police officer found you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we’re about done here,” said Bob Lecuyer. “But there’s one last question I need to ask you. Who do you think killed your friend?”

  Bjørn Hauglie merely shook his head.

  LATER THAT DAY Eirik Nyland was sitting next to the big picture window in conference room number two at the Bluefin Bay Resort, checking the Norwegian newspapers on his laptop. The three largest papers had the story on the front page, although it was obvious that as of yet they had very little information to report because the headlines were bigger than the actual articles:

  “BODY OF NAKED NORWEGIAN CANOEIST FOUND IN MINNESOTA”

  “BRUTAL MURDER OF NORWEGIAN TOURIST”

  “NAKED MAN KILLED IN NORWEGIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY”

  The newspapers also contained articles about Minnesota, the Midwest, and Norwegian Americans—all of them probably gleaned from Wikipedia.

  Nyland was still thinking about how Bjørn Hauglie shook his head when Lecuyer asked him who might have killed his friend. He couldn’t get that image out of his mind. There are lots of different ways to shake your head, he thought. And this was one way that he’d seen before. It signified a person who no longer believed that the world was turning as it should. That Friday would be followed by Saturday. That the sun would come up tomorrow too. That the whole thing wasn’t just a dream.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Behind him he could hear a screeching and popping sound coming from the loudspeakers. A young woman who was in charge of conference arrangements at the Bluefin Bay was testing the microphones and sound equipment for the press conference that would be held in an hour. Occasionally she exchanged a few words with Lecuyer, who was standing next to the fax machine. He’d been there for a while now. The autopsy report from Duluth was supposed to be ready this afternoon. That was what Lecuyer was waiting for.

  The conference room was on the second floor, with a view of the small bay, which Nyland assumed had given the hotel its name. A trim white sailboat was anchored nearby. On the other side of the bay a road headed up the slope toward a shop and an auto junkyard. Right outside the hotel he could see some partially collapsed stone structures sticking out of the water. He wondered if they were the remains of an old dock.

  Nyland turned around in his chair. “What do you think we’ll learn from the autopsy report?” he asked.

  “The preliminary autopsy report,” said Lecuyer. “Probably not much. We’ll have to wait until the samples taken from the crime scene have been analyzed. If we’re lucky, they might give us a few leads. But they’re being analyzed at an institute in Chicago, and the lab is really backed up. So I’m afraid it’s going to take some time. At least a week, I’d guess.”

  “What do you think the samples might show?”

  “Well, they’re testing the blood that was found on Hauglie. Plus the blood that was spattered on the tree trunks. We can always hope that the perpetrator left behind some sort of biological traces.”

  “What do you think the murder weapon was?”

  “I’ve rarely seen anybody killed with such force. Maybe an ax handle. Or a baseball bat. We’ve done a search of the lake and the river, but didn’t find anything.”

  “Have we received any tips?”

  “Two,” said Lecuyer. “Anonymous, of course. You know how it is in small towns. Old grudges. Suspicion and gossip. But we’re checking them out, of course. My assistant, Jason Fries, is working on one of the tips today. Out at the local Indian reservation. The other one has to do with the clerk at the Whispering Pines Motel, where the guys were staying. An anonymous woman claimed that the clerk is known to spy on the guests, and that he’s a suspicious type, in general. That’s why I pressured Hauglie a bit to tell us about him. I don’t put much faith in the claim, but we do have to question him. After all, he was one of the last people to see Lofthus alive. And no matter what, we need to visit the motel ASAP.”

  “So no witnesses?” asked Nyland.

  “No. Just the police officer who found the body and arrested Hauglie.”

  “Oh, right. Lance Hansen. So what’s your opinion of him?” Bob Lecuyer rubbed his chin as if tugging on a nonexistent beard.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “On the one hand he gave us a detailed explanation that sounds perfectly reasonable.”

  “And yet . . . ,” said Nyland.

  Lecuyer smiled. “And yet I have a feeling that he’s keeping something back. I don’t know why, but sometimes you just get a gut feeling, you know? But it’s quite possible that I’m mistaken, so don’t take what I just said too seriously.”

  At that moment the fax machine started up. Nyland placed his laptop on the floor, then got up and went over to join Lecuyer, who was intently reading the paper that was coming out.

  “Would you mind giving us some privacy for a moment?” he said to the young woman who worked for the hotel. She left without a word, closing the door behind her.

  “What is it?” asked Nyland.

  “Guess what our friend had in his stomach.”

  Nyland thought for a moment. “Red wine, at least.”

  “Right. Plus the remains of his last meal, consisting of beef and rice.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Semen.” Lecuyer had a pleased little smile on his face. “And this was the guy who was going to be getting married soon,” he said. “So Bjørn Hauglie had a motive,” said Nyland.

  “A classic motive. Jealousy.”

  Eirik Nyland paused to consider this. Then he said, “What are you planning to do with this information? I mean, with regard to the press conference.”

  “Nothing. We’re keeping this news to ourselves for now,” said Lecuyer.

  9

  DRIVING NORTH ON HIGHWAY 61, Lance Hansen heard a brief portion of the FBI’s press conference on the car radio. It was ten after six, and the conference had evidently been recorded earlier. He hadn’t even known they were planning to hold a press conference. Now he heard Bob Lecuyer say they hadn’t yet made any arrests in the case. When asked whether Bjørn Hauglie was a suspect, Lecuyer replied that his only status was that of a witness.

  “But do you have any indications whatsoever that anyone else besides those two Norwegians was at Baraga’s Cross on that night?” asked a female journalist.

  “I can’t comment on that,” said Lecuyer. Then he added that they were waiting for the lab analysis of the blood that had been found at the crime scene, and they hoped this report would provide new angles to the case.

  The radio announcer then said, “The Norwegian police officer Eirik Nyland, who is in Cook County to assist the FBI and the local police, had the following to say about the extraordinary circumstances of investigating the murder of a Norwegian in the area that is sometimes jokingly called the ‘Scandinavian Riviera’ ”:

  “First of all, this is a tragic case . . . as is eve
ry homicide,” said Nyland, speaking with a typically British accent. “But the fact that this happened in Minnesota . . . I don’t know, but maybe the public will be especially eager to help us solve the murder of a young man from the old country . . . or at any rate what many Minnesotans consider to be the old country.”

  And with that the broadcast segment came to an end. Lance regretted having missed the press conference when it was broadcast live on the radio a couple of hours earlier.

  He drove through Grand Marais, the county seat of Cook County and a small town of approximately 1,400 permanent inhabitants, with almost as many vacationers in the summertime. He was thinking about what the female reporter had asked. Was there anything to indicate that someone else besides the two Norwegians had been at the scene of the crime that night? Nobody knew that Andy Hansen from Two Harbors had driven down Baraga Cross Road at about 9:30 p.m.—just a few hours before the murder. I wonder how Andy is feeling now, thought Lance. But it was impossible to imagine, since he had no idea what his brother had been doing down by the cross, or why he’d found it necessary to lie about his whereabouts. The question of how he was now feeling depended, of course, on what he’d been up to that particular night. For a moment the worst possible scenario crossed Lance’s mind, and again he pictured that shattered skull. He had exactly the same feeling as he’d had in the hours immediately after discovering the murder—the feeling that something that belonged to him alone was about to be taken away from him. He’d noticed it right after he heard Lecuyer and Nyland talking about the murder on the radio. As if it now belonged to everybody, and yet for a few dizzying minutes it had belonged solely to Lance Hansen. That unreal sight in the birch underbrush. The tufts of hair. The sharp little fragments of bone. The teeth. The buzzing of the flies.

  I still haven’t started shaking, he thought.

  Then he thought about Andy again. Why couldn’t he have asked him outright what he was doing near the cross on that night? Tell him that lying was a risky business for someone on the periphery of a homicide investigation. He might be drawn into the very center of it. And once a person ended up there, it was often too late to admit that he had lied. At that point there might be no choice but to continue lying, and in the long run he could end up being convicted of a crime that he hadn’t committed. As his brother, this was what Lance should say to Andy. As his big brother and a police officer. He should do it to protect Andy, but he knew that he wouldn’t. It must be because I’m scared of the truth, he thought. More than anything, I’m afraid of hearing what Andy was really doing over there.