“Is it true that this is also a souvenir shop?” he asked.
“Through that door over there.” Deb Nelson nodded toward a closed door at the other end of the drugstore. “I haven’t had time to open the shop yet, but come with me, and I’ll let you in.”
Nyland put the pill bottle in the inside pocket of his jacket and followed her.
She stuck a key in the lock and unlocked the door. “Feel free to go in,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The first thing he saw was a bunch of hunched trolls wearing knitted tunics. On the walls hung decorative plates with pictures of the Norwegian king and queen, and others with pictures of the Swedish royal family. Coffee cups and serving platters with traditional Norwegian rosemaling designs. Cuckoo clocks with the same floral designs and an array of wooden moose. Decorated rolling pins, mangles, and cheese slicers. There was also a long row of rosemaling-painted wooden horses, which he had always thought were a Swedish tradition, not Norwegian. Weren’t they called Dala horses? And of course there was a large selection of stickers, key rings, T-shirts, and other items bearing various messages. He read a few of them. “Pray for me, I’m married to a Norwegian!” “Being married to a Swede builds character.” “Lutefisk: It separates the real Scandinavians from the bleached blondes!” “World’s Greatest Farmor!” “Kiss me, I’m Swedish!” “Got sisu?” “Made in America (with Norwegian parts).” “How do you tell an extroverted Finn? He’s looking at your shoes instead of his own.”
Through the window he saw a logging truck slowly rumble past, making all the decorative plates and glass Viking ships rattle. He thought he ought to buy something. After all, he’d made her open the shop. But was there anything here that his daughters or Vibeke would like, if only as a joke?
He gave a start when he noticed someone come up behind him. Deb Nelson had come in. She was standing there without saying a word. She was evidently the sort of person who didn’t speak unless spoken to. And her movements were constrained to the very minimum. It looked as if she rehearsed every gesture, as if she’d once taken a course in how to avoid drawing attention. Nothing should disturb a customer involved in considering an important purchase. It made Nyland feel very uncomfortable.
“I’d like that one,” he said, pointing to a glass Viking ship. “Certainly,” said Deb Nelson.
“They’re much cheaper here than in Norway,” he explained.
“Ah, Norway . . . ” The words seemed to slip out, but then she quickly controlled herself. “Sorry,” she said, and disappeared out the door, presumably going to the storeroom.
Nyland picked up the glass object and peered at the price tag. It was a ridiculously expensive amount to pay for bringing home a Norwegian souvenir from abroad, he thought. But he didn’t think he could change his mind. He was going to have to buy it, and the Viking ship was no worse than anything else in the shop. It was actually a nicely made glass Viking ship. Nothing wrong with that. It just seemed like a meaningless object to bring home from the States.
Deb Nelson returned with a small box. She took off the lid to let him see the glass Viking ship inside. It was nestled on a bed of soft tissue paper.
He nodded.
“Shall I wrap it for you?” she asked.
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Nyland.
He watched as she wrapped the box, soundlessly and with a minimum of movements, as if this too was something that she’d learned at a course in how to avoid drawing attention.
When she finally handed him the beautifully wrapped gift, he thanked Deb and bowed politely. He knew full well that he couldn’t give Vibeke a glass Viking ship, but he was still glad he’d bought it.
They went back to the drugstore together. Behind the counter stood a tall, blond woman, whom he guessed to be about forty. Pinned to the left side of her ample and voluptuous bosom was a name tag: Cynthia Seagren.
He raised his eyes to meet hers. Cynthia Seagren smiled—the sort of smile offered by women who are used to being admired. He stood there with the Viking ship under his arm and thought about the story that Bill Eggum had told him, about the three Swedes who had crossed the Atlantic so long ago, throwing up the whole way. In front of him stood a direct result of that wearisome voyage. The three immigrants would have undoubtedly thought it was well worth the effort if they could have seen Cynthia.
14
THE SUN HAD COLORED THE LAKE an almost artificial-looking blend of yellow, pink, and violet. Soon the violet would darken and erase the other hues, until finally everything would turn to black. But it would be a while before that happened.
Lance was sitting at his desk at home looking at a photograph. He’d taken it out of a folder of old photos from the Soderberg archives. Each folder usually contained eight pictures, and he’d already gone through about twenty of these folders.
The photo he held in his hand showed a man standing in a small clearing in the woods. According to the accompanying text, he was standing on a path. He wore pin-striped trousers. They almost look like suit pants, thought Lance. His jacket might also pass for an old suit coat. Worn and wrinkled. He had his thumbs hooked in his suspenders and was staring truculently at the photographer, whoever that might have been. The text in the folder, written in Olga Soderberg’s florid script, said, “Joe Caribou on the path leading to his mother’s house, 1905.”
There was no photo of Swamper Caribou in the archives. This picture of his brother was the closest Lance was going to get to the medicine man who had disappeared. Joe looked like someone who hadn’t slept in a long time. The photo was taken thirteen years after his brother had vanished. The path to his mother’s house, thought Lance. From the picture it wasn’t possible to determine where the house was located. Somewhere in Cook County, he assumed. Maybe on the reservation, or near Grand Marais. Maybe somewhere else altogether. The path, which was barely visible in the picture, no long existed, of course. The house it once led to probably didn’t either. The photo showed a long-deceased man standing on a path that had grown over ages ago, on his way to a place that no longer existed and would be impossible to reconstruct—the small home of an old Ojibwe woman in possession of old stories that had also been forgotten.
Thirteen years earlier this man’s brother had vanished without a trace. It was this missing brother that Lance was searching for. He wanted to find out how Swamper had died—which was something no one knew. It seemed like an almost hopeless task, so many years after the man had disappeared. So far the only thing Lance had to go on was the information he’d found in the Grand Marais Pioneer. First and foremost, there was Joe Caribou’s statement to the editor. He had said that his brother disappeared “from his hunting cabin near the mouth of the Cross River around the time of the last full moon, which was on the night of March 16.” But this quote was not strong enough evidence that Swamper had vanished on that particular night. “Around the time of the last full moon” indicated that Joe wasn’t exactly sure when his brother had gone missing. It might be give or take a couple of days, thought Lance. He also had the brief article from September 2 of that same year, which reported that a body had been found near the mouth of the Manitou River, but it had been impossible to establish the victim’s identity. Lance assumed that the body of Swamper Caribou had been found. The current must have carried it the ten or so miles during the six months since he had died.
He put the photograph down on the desk and took another one out of the folder. This picture showed four young men in a photographer’s studio. Two of them sat ramrod-straight on chairs, slightly turned toward each other. Behind them stood the other two men, their arms hanging straight at their sides. All four had big, workman hands that seemed much older than the rest of their bodies. They wore dark suits, and all of them had close-cropped blond hair. Under the picture Olga Soderberg had written: “Duluth, 1904. Four from Tofte visiting town. From left: Helge Tofte, Andrew Tofte, Thormod Olson, and Sam Bortvedt.”
&n
bsp; There sat Thormod Olson twelve years after he fell through the ice. If that was what actually happened, of course. Lance wondered whether the man staring at the camera knew the truth about Swamper Caribou. Or was the whole thing merely a coincidence? But it was the convergence of time and space that made Lance suspicious. The fact that both events—Swamper’s disappearance and Thormod’s night of terror, which, according to the family mythology, he should not have survived—took place around the time of the full moon in March 1892, near the mouth of the Cross River. But again he was confronted by the same lack of hard evidence. Because even though Thormod Olson was trekking through the moonlight, it didn’t mean that he necessarily fell through the ice on the night when the moon was full. Here, too, there might be some leeway in the chronology of plus or minus a couple of days. And the fact that he fell through the ice “near the mouth of the Cross River,” as Lance had always heard, didn’t provide very exact information either. But it was impossible to tell anything from the face staring so resolutely at the camera in a photographer’s studio in Duluth more than a hundred years ago.
Lance continued to study the two pictures. Three of the young men in the photo taken in Duluth had no role in the chain of events that he was trying to uncover. But Joe Caribou and Thormod Olson did. The one nicely turned out and blond, with big workman’s fists, twenty-seven years old. The other with black bowl-cut hair and a solemn face. How old must he have been? If the photo had been taken recently, Lance would have guessed that Joe was about sixty, but presumably he hadn’t yet turned forty. He looked as if he could have turned stone to dust, just with a glance. At the same time, he looked worn out. His face grimy and puffy. Was he an alcoholic? That was quite possible, considering how widespread alcoholism had been among the Indians back then. But it was impossible to determine from this one photo. Maybe pain made him sleep badly. He might have had rheumatism, for example. Or a plethora of other illnesses and complaints. Migraines. Nightmares. Or maybe economic worries were keeping him awake at night. Because as he stood there on that path that had long since been taken over by weeds, he looked like a man who hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in a very long time.
Lance imagined Joe Caribou turning on his heel and continuing on his way through the woods as soon as the picture was snapped. Somewhere farther on was his mother’s house. That was where he was headed. What had they talked about? Did they discuss Joe’s brother, Swamper, the medicine man? Who knows what they might have found out during the course of those thirteen years that had passed since he disappeared. Information could have come to the Ojibwe tribe via channels that were inaccessible to the newly arrived Scandinavians. But what could they have done if they thought someone had killed Swamper? Would the local police force even have cared? The truth was that a lost cow would have stirred greater interest than a missing Indian. Even one who had been well liked by the first editor of the local newspaper. A missing Indian was simply not something that required attention, thought Lance. Indians disappeared. There was nothing to be done about it. Besides, that chapter would soon be closed. He was fully aware that this was the general opinion of the times. But that wasn’t how people thought anymore. At least Lance didn’t. Swamper Caribou was entitled to justice.
At the same time, he knew that this was not the whole explanation behind his interest in the matter. There was something else, presumably even more important, although he wasn’t fully prepared to admit it. He knew that he would never have started examining old murders in Cook County if not for the murder of the young Norwegian. “Has this ever happened before?” Mike Jones had asked as they stood there in the parking lot a few hours after Lance found the dead man. That was when it began. But now the mystery of Swamper Caribou’s disappearance had become so interesting all on its own that he no longer made any effort to differentiate one motive from another. All he knew was that he would never have any peace until he found out what happened at the mouth of the Cross River in March 1892.
Again he looked at the two photographs. The blond Thormod, twenty-seven years old, staring with a steely expression into the camera lens in Duluth. Did he know what happened to Swamper Caribou twelve years earlier? Was he carrying around a big secret? Naturally it was impossible to tell such things from the picture. Just as it was impossible to guess what Joe Caribou and his mother had talked about when he arrived at her house in the woods.
There was one thing that Lance had wondered about ever since he found this photo of Joe. How did Olga Soderberg know that he was “on the path leading to his mother’s house”? Somebody must have told her that. And who owned the original picture? he wondered. All of these pictures were copies. Was there a list of who had supplied the originals? In the folder, each photo had been assigned a number. Underneath the empty plastic sleeve belonging to the Joe Caribou picture, the label said: “No. 0127: Joe Caribou on the path leading to his mother’s house, 1905.” What did these numbers refer to? Hadn’t he once seen a list? It should have been included with the folders of photos, but it wasn’t there.
He spun around on his desk chair and gave a kick to propel it over to the wall where the archives were stored. There was nothing to do but start looking. First he searched the spot where the photo folders belonged, although at the moment they were spread out haphazardly on his desk. When he didn’t find anything, he got up from his chair and began a systematic search of the shelves. He kept finding things that he wanted to pull out and study more closely, even though he’d seen everything before. He never tired of looking through the archive materials. For instance, he had copies of all the annual reports of the Great Lakes Bank, which existed from 1911 until 1929. He also had minutes of proceedings and game results for the Cook County Timber Cruisers, a baseball team that was active between 1905 and 1951. He knew he’d find Norwegian and Swedish names mentioned everywhere, but almost nothing about those who had lived here before the Scandinavians arrived. The people who had been here all along.
For a moment he ran his fingertips over the worn spine of the diary belonging to his great-grandmother Nanette, the so-called French diary. He wondered what she had written about. Probably the weather, as well as her hopes for her children. Yet what sort of hopes could they really have had in the wilderness where they lived? That the children would not die too young?
Right above the French diary he found what he was looking for. A few sheets of paper inside a ledger, mistakenly filed among the folders containing handwritten recipes. He pulled the ledger from the shelf. The label said “Photo Index.” The list began with the number 0001 and went all the way up to 0168. Next to each number was a brief description of the picture. For example, number 0019: “Duluth, 1904. From left: Helge Tofte, Andrew Tofte, Thormod Olson, and Sam Bortvedt.” And under the text it said: “Photo credit: Palmer Stevenson, Duluth. Owner: Gus Tofte.” Lance scanned a couple more pages until he finally came to what he was looking for:
“No. 0127: Joe Caribou on the path leading to his mother’s house, 1905.” And underneath: “Photo credit: Unknown. Owner: William Dupree.”
The sight of his ex-father-in-law’s name made Lance feel as if something had opened up inside him. Some sort of valve. Something opened, and then it closed again. It didn’t last more than a second. It made him think about all the times he’d driven past old Willy Dupree’s house and thought that he really ought to stop by for a chat. But after he and Mary got divorced, Lance had found it impossible to knock on Willy’s door.
When he met Mary, he already knew her father through the historical society. Willy had never been an especially active member of the group. He would occasionally show up for a meeting or an excursion, although without making any contribution other than his presence. But if someone asked him anything about the Ojibwe and Grand Portage, he usually had a ready answer.
Lance looked at the picture of Swamper Caribou’s brother. If there was anyone who might know something about the missing medicine man, it would be Willy Dupree. And this photo had come fr
om Willy. But Lance couldn’t recall his father-in-law ever mentioning Swamper Caribou or the ghost stories about him. Even though he didn’t believe in ghosts, Lance thought it would be interesting to know more about those stories. They might contain fragments of actual occurrences, he thought. Details that might point to what really happened back in March 1892. Suddenly this all seemed quite plausible to him. Even though Willy, as far as Lance could remember, had never mentioned Swamper Caribou, he still had a feeling that Willy must be aware of the ghost stories that circulated among the Ojibwe. He was also curious as to why Willy owned an old photo of Swamper’s brother, Joe. Maybe someone in his family had known the two brothers. That was not at all unlikely. On the contrary. The local Ojibwe band was not very big.
Thinking about his ex-father-in-law reminded Lance that he needed to phone Mary. That was something he’d decided yesterday, while he was visiting Andy and Tammy. It wouldn’t hurt to take some extra precautions with our kids, he had thought. Now he glanced at his watch. It was just a little past nine. He grabbed the phone and was about to tap in her number, but then he hesitated. What was he really supposed to say? That she needed to take better care of their son? Oh, right. That was bound to go over well. Or should he say that there might be a murderer on the loose in the North Shore, and it was possible that he’d strike again? Like in some horror movie? He hung up the phone. I don’t need to call her, he thought. But he felt a small pang of guilt, and wondered whether he should do it after all.
At that moment the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Am I speaking to Lance Hansen?”
He could hear at once that it was the Norwegian policeman calling.
“Yep.”
“This is Inspector Eirik Nyland.”
“Oh, hi. How’s it going?”
The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy) Page 15
