The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy)

by Vidar Sundstøl

  “Huh. And what sort of thing would that involve?” asked Lance. “What do you mean?”

  “The little piece that doesn’t fit in the picture. What sort of thing might it be?”

  “Basically it could be anything,” said Nyland. “Something that points in a different direction than the other evidence and leads. Something that threatens to wreck an otherwise solid case. It could be as simple as a gut feeling. You might have a sense that somebody is holding something back. Somebody who shouldn’t have any reason to withhold information.”

  Lance looked at him and smiled. “Well, if you think I’m holding something back, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you,” he said.

  Nyland laughed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything like that,” he said. “You’re a policeman, after all. Like me. We both take pride in our work.”

  Lance Hansen nodded. He nodded several times with a resolute look on his face.

  “But I work for the U.S. Forest Service. I only have to deal with people fishing without a license, and things like that. Illegal campsites. While you . . . ”

  “But our jobs are essentially the same,” said Nyland. “We enforce the law. And the law is more than mere words in a book. It’s based on the fundamental idea that every society would collapse if there were no repercussions for wrongdoing.”

  “Yup,” said Lance. “I’ll drink to that.”

  They both took another swallow of beer, and then Nyland went on. “And for a law to have any value, somebody has to enforce it. And that means us, Lance. Even though there’s no pleasure in issuing a fine to a hard-pressed family man who’s fishing without a license. Am I right?”

  Lance nodded.

  “And there’s actually no joy in making sure a killer ends up in prison, either. It’s a thankless job, but somebody has to do it. It’s of the greatest importance to society that these things get done. Both catching a murderer and issuing a fine for illegal fishing. And once a person takes on that sort of assignment, he has to prove himself worthy of the job.”

  Nyland took a sip of beer, settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and stretched out his legs in front of him. Then he cast a quick glance at Lance Hansen. He was stroking his chin, as if checking on the quality of his morning shave. Nyland hoped he’d given his colleague enough to think about, in case he was, in fact, withholding information. But he really didn’t think he was. It was just something that Lecuyer had said. A feeling the FBI agent had got when Lance gave his statement. And then there was the fact that Lance was the one who had found the dead man, and also the one who had brought in Hauglie. There was no getting around it—Hansen had a central role in the case, at least so far.

  They had talked to a lot of people, but no one had seen or heard anything suspicious. Two days ago Nyland had gone with Jason Fries to Finland. What a godforsaken place that was. Most of the residents were descendants of Finnish immigrants, of course. Nyland wasn’t sure if that was the reason, but he’d sensed a different atmosphere there. More reserved. No one said more than was absolutely necessary. Maybe it would have been different if he’d been a Finnish investigator instead of Norwegian. The one person who had talked freely and easily was the owner of the community’s only bar. He remembered the two Norwegians well. They’d stopped by a couple of times. Seemed like nice, polite guys. Drank only mineral water, he’d said. But not even the bar owner had told Nyland and Fries anything of significance.

  Yet somewhere there had to be someone who knew something. There always was. Someone who, for example, might have seen Hauglie and Lofthus arguing earlier in the day. Or for that matter had observed a third person near the crime scene. Something like that. Nyland was convinced that person existed.

  “Yeah, well, we just have to do the best we can,” said Lance Hansen.

  He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to Nyland. “But sometimes even that isn’t good enough,” he added.

  “What do you mean?” asked Nyland.

  “Oh, I’m just talking a bunch of crap.” Then he seemed to pull himself together. He sat up straight in his chair and drank some more beer. “Mesabi Red,” he said, studying the reddish liquid in his glass. “Named after the Mesabi Iron Range.”

  “What’s that?” asked Nyland.

  “The range is a chain of mountains and ridges seventy-five miles from here, off in that direction.” He pointed behind him, away from the lake. “It once had the largest iron deposits in the world. Now they’re mostly gone. The pits that were left behind are like huge wounds in the landscape. In some places the ridges have been obliterated with dynamite.”

  “Seems like a really shortsighted way to make use of a natural resource,” remarked Nyland.

  Lance nodded pensively. “Sometimes I think we seem like a gigantic swarm of grasshoppers that came flying across the sea and found this . . . this field that we call America. And we’ve kept on swarming and eating up the land. But I don’t know . . . Other times it seems to me the most beautiful story that’s ever been told.”

  Nyland thought Lance Hansen was not the average provincial policeman. Then again, he undoubtedly was that too. But he was also something different. As if part of him, but only that one part, had landed on the wrong rung in life.

  “So what does ‘Mesabi’ mean?” he asked.

  “It means ‘giant.’ The Ojibwe thought they could see the outline of a slumbering giant in the mountain chain. Most things up here have once had a different name. The lakes and the mountains and the streams. Lake Superior too.”

  Below them the lake stretched all the way to the horizon.

  “Lake Superior is Kitchi-Gami. The big water. And Grand Portage is Kitchi Onigaming. The big portage place. You haven’t been to Grand Portage yet, have you?”

  “No,” said Nyland.

  “It’s forty minutes north of Grand Marais, almost on the Canadian border. An Indian reservation. That’s where my son lives.”

  “Oh, really? What’s he doing up there?” asked Nyland.

  “He goes to school. He’s seven years old.”

  Nyland tried to put everything in place in his mind, but it felt like he was grabbing at thin air. He recalled that Jason Fries had mentioned the Indian reservation. One of the anonymous tips to the police had concerned somebody on that reservation. “A typical small-time crook,” Fries had said.

  “He lives there with his mother, my ex-wife,” Lance went on. “I was married to an Ojibwe woman. We’re divorced.”

  “Oh, now I understand,” said Nyland.

  But he didn’t really get it. He no longer knew what to believe or think about Lance Hansen.

  “Isn’t that unusual?” he asked.

  “To be married to an Ojibwe?”

  “Yes. A mixed-race marriage, I mean.”

  “It’s not exactly the norm, but it’s not particularly unusual either. I think my parents would have had problems accepting it if I’d married an African American girl. But the fact that Mary was Ojibwe never really came up.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “I think it’s because the Ojibwe are a marginalized people. Not just the Ojibwe, but American Indians in general. So their cultures are not perceived as threatening. At the same time, many white Americans respect the Indian cultures, but it’s a form of respect that involves no . . . what shall I say? That involves no risk, precisely because their traditional way of life was destroyed long ago. Not much of this is on a conscious level, of course. For instance, if you try to discuss these matters with people, they won’t even know what you’re talking about. Just as they’ll deny that they have anything against marriage between whites and blacks. They’ll deny it until the issue affects their own daughter or son. Then they’ll suddenly find all sorts of excuses for why such a marriage shouldn’t take place . . . ” Lance waved his right hand as if shooing away an insect. “We may have a superficial respect for what we think their culture entails
. Having a close relationship with nature, and all that. A form of spirituality. But, in fact, that doesn’t count as respect.”

  “But it’s different for you,” remarked Nyland.

  “Yes,” said Lance. “For me, it’s different.”

  Then, after a brief pause, “That’s because of my son.”

  “And you must have friends and acquaintances among them. Among the Indian tribe, I mean.”

  “I have an ex-father-in-law who I’m extremely fond of, even though I haven’t spoken to him in three years, not since Mary and I split up. Otherwise I don’t have any real friends there. But my son does. And those friends have brothers and sisters and parents. It’s a whole network of people. And even though I don’t spend time with any of them, except for Jimmy—that’s my son—that network is very important to me, because he’s a part of it.”

  After a moment he added, “Do you have kids?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Nyland. “Two daughters. Eleven and thirteen.” Lance nodded and smiled.

  A natural pause ensued, as if the conversation were taking a breather. Nyland sipped his Mesabi Red. Below them was Lake Superior, now displaying large patches of pink and gold on its surface, with an incredible number of different shades of blue. Off in the distance a few long, narrow streaks were almost turquoise. A fine mist floated over most of the enormous expanse of water. The light was soft and veiled, as if shining through millions of microscopic drops. Just like when he was sitting in the café with Sheriff Eggum, Nyland now thought that he was starting to enjoy being in this place. If everything fit together the way he and Lecuyer thought—meaning that Bjørn Hauglie had killed Georg Lofthus—would he want to go back to Norway as soon as Hauglie was arrested? He pictured in his mind Vibeke and their two daughters in the cabin out at Lillesand. Saw them eating at the table under the birch tree in the evening. The sunset over the archipelago. He thought about what it was like being Vibeke’s husband. The girls’ father. How good it was to be together like that, away from work and all the misery that he regularly encountered on the job.

  Again he looked down and fixed his gaze on Lake Superior. Two SUVs with canoes fastened to the roofs drove past on the road. In his mind Nyland pictured a map of North America and thought about where he was on that map at this moment. It felt good to be here. Knowing that he was surrounded by such huge landmasses on all sides. Here he was, looking at the world’s largest lake, yet in this place he had no sense of a shoreline, even though it was called the North Shore. He was definitely inland—that much he could tell. But not like in Norway, where being inland always made him feel slightly claustrophobic, confined and closed in. Here, on the other hand, he felt protected. And that was a good feeling. Way out there to the east was the Atlantic Ocean. Equally far to the west was the Pacific. And here he sat, drinking Mesabi Red with Lance Hansen, in the very middle of the continent. Maybe Hansen was another reason why he liked being here. The two of us would have been good friends if we’d lived in the same place, thought Nyland. He recalled that when he was young he’d had daydreams about starting over somewhere far away. With new friends, new routines, different interests. On this evening, here with Lance Hansen, he was experiencing something that resembled a distant echo of those daydreams.

  But the feeling lasted only a moment.

  “I was wondering about something,” said Lance.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve seen photos of the dead man, right?”

  Nyland nodded.

  “Doesn’t that sort of thing ever make you feel . . . like throwing up?”

  As a homicide detective, Eirik Nyland was constantly asked questions like that. How could he stand to see such brutal deaths?

  “No, it doesn’t really turn my stomach,” he replied. “It did the first few times, but not anymore. I suppose you just get used to it. So, no, I don’t feel like throwing up . . . but it’s still . . . it does . . . ”

  “It does affect you, all the same?” Lance said, completing his sentence.

  “That’s right,” said Nyland with relief. “Of course it affects me. That’s only normal. It’s not exactly the same thing as growing roses, after all.”

  He’d been on the verge of telling Lance his dream in which he was always left feeling so helpless in the end. Standing on the doorstep outside their house in Asker. A man who assaults and kills little girls has just driven off with his daughters. A man whom Nyland had been investigating during a case, but he’d been unable to get the man convicted. And he’d almost told all of this to Lance Hansen. How, when he woke up, he felt something inside of him was about to be destroyed. This dream was the real answer to the question about how his job affected him. There was no other honest answer.

  “Personally, I would never be able to handle it,” said Lance. “This is the only murder case I’ve ever been involved in, but . . . well, not actually involved in, but . . . and I think it’s completely . . . I don’t know . . . ”

  “Have you been having problems since you found the body?” Lance stared straight ahead, his face gloomy. “Nothing is the same after a murder, is it?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing is ever the same.”

  “Not for the victim, at any rate,” said Nyland.

  Lance looked at him in disbelief.

  “It was a joke,” he said, raising his hands apologetically. “Not a very good one, but it was meant as a joke.”

  “Nothing is ever the same for anyone who comes in contact with the murder in some way. Don’t you agree?” Lance went on. “For you and your colleagues, it’s different. It has to be that way. But for everyone else who has a connection to the victim . . . or to the murderer . . . or to the crime scene . . . even a slight connection . . . for them something is forever destroyed. The time before the murder seems almost idyllic.”

  “Idyllic?” Nyland repeated in surprise.

  “Yes. I don’t know . . . ” Lance sighed and rubbed his face, as if he felt worn out. “It’s just that . . . this potential for violence . . . We don’t see it, aren’t aware of it. We notice it only after it’s too late.”

  Nyland had a feeling Lance Hansen might know something about the murder after all. Something he hadn’t told the police. Something he presumably hadn’t told anyone. Nyland had encountered many people who lied during murder investigations. Lying about a homicide was not like lying about other types of crime. Having knowledge about a murder was an inhuman burden to carry. So when somebody did lie or withhold information in a homicide case, it was almost always for one of three reasons: The individual in question was the murderer and was lying so as not to get caught. Or he had something to do with the murder but couldn’t report everything he knew because then he’d be forced to reveal something else that would prove to be vastly unfavorable, most often criminal, about himself. Or he was lying to protect others.

  Nyland suddenly remembered what Lance had mentioned just a few minutes ago—that he had family on the Indian reservation. One of the anonymous tips had involved a man who lived there. Was there a connection? Lance had talked about a network. That a network existed and it meant a great deal to him because his son was part of it.

  “Is there something about this murder that is bothering you in particular?” he now asked.

  “Should there be something that didn’t bother me in particular?” Lance replied.

  “I mean . . . Is it possible that there’s something you may have forgotten to tell us?”

  “What do you mean by ‘forgotten’?”

  There was a sharpness in Lance’s voice that Nyland hadn’t heard before.

  “When I say ‘forgotten’ I simply mean ‘forgotten,’ ” he said. “Sometimes a person forgets a detail that later proves to be important to the case. You know what I mean?”

  “Oh,” said Lance, “and this detail is supposedly bothering me now? Is that what you mean?”

  Nyl
and was just about to reply when Lance went on.

  “Here’s a detail for you. When I found the victim, he was lying on his stomach, so he was facedown on the forest floor. But even so, I could see his teeth.”

  “I remember that from the photographs,” said Nyland.

  “You’ve probably seen that sort of thing before, but for me, it was something out of a bad dream . . . a nightmare. I think about those teeth several times a day.”

  He picked up his glass and downed the rest of his beer in one gulp. Then he set the glass on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “So. There’s your detail,” he said.

  “What about the diary?” asked Nyland. He was trying for a more cheerful tone.

  Lance sat up straighter. “The diary? I almost forgot about that. Since I don’t know French, I thought it might be fun to have you translate some of it. Just a few lines. I’d really appreciate it. Bring your beer, and we’ll go into my office.”

  Nyland got up and followed Lance into the house. He noticed the shoes and boots that were lined up against the wall on the floor in the hallway. Jackets and caps hung neatly from a hat rack. Lance Hansen seemed to be an orderly sort of person. On the wall was a hunting photo: two men kneeling on either side of a buck. He couldn’t be sure, but he assumed one of the men must be Lance.

  As soon as he entered the office and saw the collection that covered one wall from floor to ceiling, he understood why Eggum had called Lance a local historian. The man had an entire archive at his disposal.

  “Old newspapers?” he asked, pulling a binder halfway from the shelf. It was labeled: “The Pioneer 1891–93.”

  “The first newspaper in Cook County,” said Lance.

  “And these are your ancestors?” Nyland was studying a black-and-white photo that hung on the wall above the desk. It showed a group of black-clad people posing for the photographer a long time ago.

  “A couple of them are, at least,” said Lance. He pointed to a young man and a girl. “Those two later got married and became the parents of my maternal grandmother.”