The Ravens

by Vidar Sundstøl

  As he stood under the spray of hot water, it occurred to him that he’d had another dream, but this time it was merely disconnected images dealing exclusively with food and Debbie Ahonen, in the strangest combinations. Oh no, that stupid text message that he’d sent her last night. It couldn’t be real. That must be something that he’d imagined because he was so hungry. When he finished showering, he checked his cell and saw to his alarm that he had, in fact, both written and sent the text. And Debbie was the recipient. She hadn’t replied. No, of course not. She was probably trying to forget the whole thing had even happened. Do you remember that evening at Baraga’s Cross? He sounded like an eighteen-year-old boy who’d been dumped.

  Yet his first dream in almost eight years had been such a tremendous experience that it overshadowed everything else. The text to Debbie, Andy breaking in, the gun in his mouth, Chrissy’s drug use, the two Ojibwe men who had threatened him—they all lost their significance when compared to the fact that he had dreamed.

  HE GOT DRESSED and drove to Grand Marais, much too wound up to stay home. On the way north, driving through a light snowfall, he began to wonder whether the dream meant something. He wasn’t at all sure whether dreams had meaning. Was there any research on the subject? He pictured in his mind a bumper sticker: Dream researchers do it in their sleep. No, the dream had been a chaos of nighttime impressions, a journey that kept leading him to the lake or down into it. He couldn’t imagine gleaning any sort of meaning from that. The one exception was the wooden figure Swamper Caribou had shown him. This is what you are looking for. There had been something insistent about that specific scene, as if everything else had simply been a long detour on its way to that figure. Two people holding hands. But what did it mean? Debbie and him, perhaps? Was that what he was looking for? In that case, he’d probably ruined the whole thing.

  By the time he reached Grand Marais he was hungry again. He parked outside the South of the Border café and went inside. The place was popular with both truckers and locals.

  “Hi, Lance. Long time no see,” said the waitress when she caught sight of him.

  “Hi, Martha.”

  “Lunch?”

  “No, second breakfast,” said Lance.

  “You don’t say?”

  “Bacon and eggs and hash browns, rye toast, coffee, and mineral water.”

  “You got it.”

  Sitting at the very back, in a small separate section, was Bill Eggum, who had been sheriff of Cook County for twenty-five years until he retired shortly after Georg Lofthus was murdered. Lance went right over to him.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked when Eggum looked up.

  “Be my guest,” said the former sheriff and then went back to eating his piece of pie.

  Lance sat down.

  “Nice day,” he said.

  Eggum replied with a grunt that could mean anything except a desire to chat. So Lance sat and looked out the window. The snow was coming down harder. A couple of cars, their windshield wipers working overtime, crept along the narrow street. It was probably stretching things a bit to call it a “nice day,” but he was in an elated mood because of the dream. As he sat there, waiting for Eggum to finish eating, he saw a car he recognized pull into the liquor store lot across the street. Out of the broken-down white pickup climbed the two long-haired guys who had threatened him in Grand Portage. He hadn’t got a good look at their faces because they’d deliberately avoided looking at him directly, but now he realized that there was something familiar about them. As they went inside the store, Lance saw out of the corner of his eye that Bill Eggum was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and pushing the empty plate aside.

  “Thought you were in Norway,” the former sheriff said.

  “I was.”

  “So how was it?”

  “Hmm . . . a little boring, to tell the truth.”

  “Yeah, well. Why bother to leave the country?” said Eggum. “We’ve got everything we need right here on the North Shore.”

  “How do you like retirement?” asked Lance.

  “Spend all my time fishing.”

  “Even in the winter?”

  “Yup. Out on the ice. Sit there on a little chair, jigging the line all day long,” said Eggum.

  “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “No. I listen to the radio.”

  “Car Talk?”

  “Sure. Those guys are hilarious.”

  “Do you miss the job?”

  “Nope. I gotta tell you, fishing is much better.”

  “I buy my fish in the grocery store.”

  “Yeah, but that’s no way to kill time.”

  “Guess not,” Lance had to admit.

  They sat in silence for a moment, sipping their coffee and looking out the window. Then the two long-haired guys came out of the liquor store. Just outside the door, one of them almost dropped the bag he was carrying and had to pause to shift his grip. His pal turned around and said something to him. Suddenly Lance realized these two men were the same ones who had been with Chrissy and her friend in the Kozy Bar.

  “Do you know who those guys are out there?” asked Lance.

  Bill Eggum leaned forward to look.

  “Two small-time crooks from Grand Portage,” he replied. “Arrested them a couple of times, but they’re mostly just dopers. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I happened to notice their vehicle in the woods a few times and wondered who the owner was,” Lance lied.

  The two men got in the pickup and drove off.

  “Lou Prodhomme is the name of one of them, but he’s called Mist. The other is Duane Kingbird,” said Eggum. “Mist and King, two birds of a feather.”

  “Friends of Lenny Diver?” asked Lance.

  “Uh-huh. Those two were supposed to be his alibi the first time he was interviewed, just a couple of days after the murder. Don’t you remember? Two friends that he claimed he’d been playing cards with all night, or something like that. It was them. Mist and King.”

  “Oh, right, I remember now,” said Lance. “But tell me, why did the police initially want to interview Diver at all? That was long before they found any biological evidence that indicated the killer had to be an Indian.”

  “Anonymous tips.”

  “Somebody called the police about him?” said Lance, surprised.

  “And demanded to talk to me,” said Eggum.

  “What did he say?”

  “Just that Lenny Diver from Grand Portage killed the Norwegian at Baraga’s Cross.”

  “Did you check the phone number he was calling from?”

  Eggum cocked his fleshy head to one side, looking a bit uncomfortable.

  “Is there any special reason you ask?”

  Lance automatically reverted to his standard lie.

  “I was the one who found the body, you know. And I’ve never been able to forget it.”

  “So you’re not doing any investigating on your own?” asked Eggum.

  “The case was solved long ago.”

  “True enough. Well, the tip was called in from a phone booth in Duluth.”

  “And it was a man?”

  “I’m not really sure,” said Eggum. “I remember thinking the person sounded strange. As if trying to disguise his voice.”

  At that moment the waitress brought Lance his food.

  “You need to watch out for this guy,” Eggum told her, pointing at Lance. “He’s a sly fox who sticks his nose into everything.”

  “I always watch out for men who eat two breakfasts in one day,” said Martha.

  Eggum stared at Lance in disbelief.

  “Is that your second breakfast?” he asked.

  Lance nodded as he started shoveling food into his mouth.

  “Have you gone out of your mind?”

  Again he nodded.

  37

  IN THE THREE YEARS since the divorce, he’d never once canceled a weekend with Jimmy, but now that everything around him was spinning out of control, he thought i
t best to keep a certain distance. On the phone he’d just told his son that he’d come down with a sore throat, but he was sure he’d be fine by next weekend. Now he was standing in the middle of the living room, thinking that he ought to be feeling guilty, but he didn’t. One of his first tasks, when this whole thing was over, would be to stop this habit of lying.

  When this whole thing was over . . . If he didn’t turn Andy in, it would never come to an end. He looked at the broken glass on the framed photograph of his brother, which was still lying on the floor. It actually seemed quite fitting that it was broken, because the Andy he knew no longer existed. It was not the real Andy who had assaulted him, just an evil remnant of his brother that had come to seek revenge. Now Lance understood much better what had happened to Andy as they’d both grown older. And why he had become such a bitter man who almost never smiled or had a friendly word for anyone. No one had known anything. Andy had been forced to bear it all alone.

  Lance picked up the photo and a few shards of glass that had fallen out. He carried them into the kitchen and tossed them in the garbage. In the hall he paused to look at the picture of Andy and himself, posing on either side of the big buck. He had made up his mind to take it down on the day he reported to the police the suspicions he had about his brother. What he said would probably lead to Andy being arrested and convicted. When that happened, Lance wouldn’t be able to keep a picture showing the two of them together. But for now, the photo was still on the wall. Before he took the last step, he had to make absolutely sure Andy really was the murderer. The worst thing would be if he sent his own brother to prison to serve a life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Lance sat in his easy chair, sighing heavily. This was too much responsibility, but he had to deal with it; otherwise he’d never be able to look himself in the eye again. He tried to sum up all the information he thought might be relevant to the case, but he ended up with a tangled mess. One thing seemed to rise above all the rest, and he kept coming back to it. Swamper Caribou saying, This is what you are looking for. A wooden figure depicting two people holding hands. As if it held the answer to all his questions, if only he could hear what it said. After sitting there for a while, with the image of that figure repeatedly appearing in his mind, Lance became aware of a great stillness inside him. The confusion ceased, and to his great surprise, he remembered something he’d forgotten.

  HE PARKED in front of Willy Dupree’s house without giving a thought to what he would say if Mary and Jimmy were there. And they might very well be visiting, since it was only seven thirty on a Friday night.

  After pounding insistently on the door a few times, he heard Willy’s voice.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he grumbled from inside the house.

  “Hi,” said Lance, when Willy opened the door.

  “Oh. Is that you?”

  He looked tired, as if he’d been jolted out of a nap.

  “Were you asleep?”

  “Come on in,” said the old man.

  After they’d each settled in their usual places and Willy had compelled his visitor to eat a cookie, the first thing Lance noticed was an object on the coffee table that hadn’t been there before. A chic-looking little bottle, maybe three inches tall, with something black inside. He saw that Willy was looking at him with an expectant smile.

  “Nail polish,” the old man said at last.

  “Oh?” said Lance, surprised. But then he got it. “Ah,” he exclaimed.

  “Your black-clad niece.”

  “So Chrissy has . . .”

  “Drink your coffee while it’s hot,” said Willy, shoving the plate of cookies closer to Lance. “And have another cookie. You look pale.”

  Lance did as he was told. Besides, the cookies were good, so he ate a few more.

  “Is there something special that you wanted to talk about?” asked Willy after they’d been eating cookies and drinking coffee in silence for a while.

  “It’s actually something incredible,” said Lance. “I had a dream.”

  “Is that right?” said Willy with interest.

  “A long dream.”

  “Had you been fasting?”

  “No, that wasn’t necessary. Well, actually, that’s exactly what I did. I got a sore throat, some sort of infection, and I couldn’t eat anything for three days.”

  Willy raised his eyebrows. He seemed impressed.

  “So that did the trick?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh. But what’s really amazing, and the reason I’m sitting here, is that I dreamed about the wooden figure, the two people holding hands.”

  “What?”

  He could see that this was going a little too fast for Willy.

  “I dreamed about Swamper Caribou, just like you said I would. He was waiting for me in the dream. When I asked him why he couldn’t leave me alone, he held up the little figure and said, ‘This is what you are looking for.’ It was a wooden figure of two people holding hands.”

  “But that was in a dream I once had,” exclaimed Willy in surprise.

  “Precisely. That’s what I suddenly remembered.”

  “In my dream I was down by the lake, looking for anything that might have floated ashore,” said Willy. “It was after a storm. That was when I found the tree root that looked exactly like two people holding hands. And I remember telling you about it. That must be where you got the idea. But then the figure jumped from my dream into yours. Not all that strange, actually.”

  “I guess not,” said Lance. “But the important part is that Swamper Caribou was holding the figure up toward me and saying that it was what I was looking for.”

  Willy got up and went over to the old dream catcher hanging from a nail on the wall. He took it down. Without a word he placed it on the coffee table in front of Lance, who hesitantly reached out to touch it. The wood of the teardrop-shaped frame was gray with age, several of the threads in the web had come loose, and only one tattered-looking feather remained of the decoration.

  “Did one of your ancestors make this?”

  “You know who made it.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Lance. But then he realized what the old man meant.

  “Swamper Caribou?”

  Willy Dupree gave a slight nod.

  “I want you to have it,” he told Lance.

  “Why?”

  “You’ve earned it.”

  Lance wanted to thank the old man, but he couldn’t come up with the right words.

  “This is what you are looking for,” said Willy thoughtfully, thinking again about the dream. “Did you interpret what he said literally?”

  “Yeah, I did,” said Lance.

  “So you’re looking for two people who are holding hands?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Maybe it means you should find yourself a woman,” said Willy with a gleam in his eye.

  Lance thought about Debbie Ahonen and the text he’d sent her. No matter who the figure represented in his dream, it couldn’t be him and Debbie.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s got a girlfriend.” Lance nodded at the bottle of nail polish on the table.

  Willy laughed.

  “What exactly did she want?” asked Lance.

  “She wanted to talk about the fact that all of you have some Indian blood. It seems to have made a big impression on her. She was especially interested in that,” he said, nodding at the dream catcher on the table. “Apparently she’s suffering from nightmares.”

  Lance stared at the bottle of nail polish. It was such a glaring presence in the room with the old-fashioned furniture and the oval-framed black-and-white photographs on the walls. Yet he had a strange feeling it somehow belonged here.

  “Did she say anything about me?” he asked.

  “That you’re a man in crisis,” replied Willy.

  “That I’m what?”

  “That you’re messing up your own life, like a man wandering through a dark house.”

  “Jesus,” exclaimed Lance.

>   “That’s one smart girl,” said Willy.

  Lance didn’t like the thought of those two sitting here only a few hours earlier, talking about him. The idiot roaming around in the dark, unable to figure anything out.

  “What else did she say?” he asked.

  “About you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That she likes you,” said Willy.

  Without warning a sob rose up in Lance’s throat, and tears filled his eyes. Willy noticed and looked away. The next second Lance felt a tear run down his cheek. He wiped it off on the sleeve of his sweater.

  “Did she say anything about herself?” His voice quavered.

  “She said she’s Sad Water.”

  “She’s got problems,” said Lance.

  “I could tell.”

  Lance pictured the white-haired Indian talking to the Goth girl, who listened as she put on black nail polish. Those slender white hands of hers still had a childish softness about them. He remembered something she’d once said: “I’ve only had one boyfriend, and what I miss most is holding someone’s hand.”

  “Two people holding hands,” he murmured.

  “What?” said Willy.

  In a flash, as if a sliver of light had opened up in a vast darkness, he realized what the figure in the dream meant. Only with great effort could he make himself sit still. It felt like he was flying. I’m Sad Water. An evil medicine man has cast a spell over me. Good Lord, how could he not have seen it before? As a police officer, Lance was fully aware that for young girls like Chrissy, it was common practice to get drugs through an older lover who was both a user and a seller. The reason he hadn’t thought of this until now had to be that he’d lacked a focal point, but that was exactly what the figure in the dream had given him. And now he saw everything clearly. It had been Chrissy and Lenny Diver the whole time.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said, getting up with Swamper Caribou’s dream catcher in his hand.

  “But you just arrived,” said Willy, surprised.

  “I’ve got to go,” Lance repeated.

  “Chrissy’s right,” said Willy. “You really are roaming around in the dark, aren’t you?”