He let go of the man’s arm and walked the few yards over to the pickup, opened the door, and got in. He was just about to reach for the radio to call for backup when he saw the naked man running in loping strides across the parking area. And before he could get out of the truck, the man had dashed into the woods and disappeared.
Lance ran after him, but he was not a light or agile man, and there was no trail here, just dense birch woods. He plowed his way forward as best he could, but he saw no sign of the naked man. After a while he stopped to listen, but there was nothing to hear. He was going to have trouble explaining how he could have let a naked, unarmed man get away. A man who was a possible murder suspect. Lance took his gun out of the holster and held it out in front of him as he used his left hand to push aside the branches. The whole time he felt that at any second someone might leap at him from the dense forest.
Now the insects started pestering him. Blackflies buzzed around his lips and nose, trying to land in the corners of his mouth. He spat and blew to fend them off, swatting at them with his free hand, but more and more of them appeared. Soon there were so many that he could hear a steady buzzing. It was hard to breathe without getting flies in his mouth, so he breathed through his nose. Sweat ran into his eyes and made it difficult for him to see clearly. Finally he had to stop. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve and looked around. Between the birch trees on his right he caught sight of a tent no more than twenty yards away. Beyond the tent glittered the lake. This must be the tent that the woman had called to report.
Lance studied the woods around him. The whole time he held the gun ready in his right hand. Suddenly he saw the man lying on his stomach in the underbrush, just a few yards away. He could see only one leg and his white butt. Lance wondered whether he was about to be lured into a trap. He noticed that the man’s shoelaces had come untied again. To reach the man he would have to crouch down and stoop to make it through the dense thicket. When he saw the rest of the naked man, he realized where all the flies had come from. A black swarming mass covered the man’s head, or rather what used to be his head. Lance took a step forward. The flies rose up and it felt like the whole swarm flew at his face. With his left hand Lance covered his mouth and nose as he stared down at the mess of hair and blood and bone. He knew that he ought to look away, but he couldn’t. He just stared. Was he looking at teeth? Yes, a row of white teeth was visible inside the bashed head. And yet the man was lying on his stomach. Lance failed to reconcile what he saw with the fact that the man couldn’t have been lying there for more than a couple of minutes. There was something settled about the way he was lying, as if the forest floor had already begun to absorb him. Lance tried desperately to understand what had happened.
At that moment he heard a sound. He spun around. A couple of yards away stood the naked man, staring at him with a rigid expression of horror on his face. He was standing there, yet at the same time he lay dead in the underbrush behind Lance, who suddenly knew what was going on. He knew where all the blood on the man’s body had come from. With his gun raised, Lance made his way through the foliage as he used his left hand to unfasten the handcuffs from his belt. This time he was going to do things properly.
“Turn around and get down on your knees!” he said. But the man made no sign of obeying the order. He just kept staring at Lance, with that same rigid expression of terror.
“Turn around!” shouted Lance. He didn’t really know why he was shouting, because the man was completely defenseless. “Okay, turn around and get down on your knees,” he said, forcing himself to speak calmly.
Instead the man sat down right there on the forest floor. Again he drew his thighs up toward his chest in a protective position, wrapped his arms around his legs, and began rocking gently back and forth, exactly as he had done when he was sitting against Baraga’s Cross.
2
ON THAT MORNING Bill Eggum, the short, fat sheriff of Cook County, Minnesota, had only two months left on active duty. He was sitting in his police car, listening to a Car Talk CD. Standing on the rocks all the way out by the lake were Lance Hansen and Sparky Redmeyer. They were talking. Seven police officers, meaning practically the entire police force of Cook County, had assembled in the parking lot. Most of them were standing around their vehicles, not doing anything useful. The call that had come in that morning sounded desperate and incoherent, indicating that U.S. Forest Service officer Lance Hansen was in serious trouble out at Baraga’s Cross. So they had rushed out with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing full-blast, all the way from Grand Marais and farther south. When they arrived and found Hansen with a man who was wearing nothing more than handcuffs and white running shoes, the sight sparked a certain amount of amusement. But it didn’t last long. The sight of the corpse had prompted two of the officers to throw up. The sheriff had seen his share of shattered skulls in his career, usually in connection with car accidents, but he’d never seen anything like this.
While he listened to the two hosts on Car Talk trying to calm a woman who claimed she’d seen a real live snake loose in her car, the sheriff wondered what Hansen and Redmeyer were talking about. Barely two hours had passed since Lance had discovered the body of a murdered man. Was that what Hansen and Redmeyer were discussing as they stood there, off by themselves on the rocks, a bit blurry-looking in the sharp glare of the lake? I wonder if Hansen has anyone he can talk to when something drastic like this happens? thought Sheriff Eggum. Does he have anyone in his life at all? Or is the past the only thing that concerns him? He looked at Lance again and wondered what it was that drove him in his untiring efforts to preserve the history of Cook County. Eggum had once seen with his own eyes the impressive archives that Lance kept in his house. Officially the archives belonged to the local historical society, but no one considered them anything but Hansen’s own property. The sheriff thought that regardless of his motivation, Lance must have something he himself lacked. Something no one else in the whole area possessed. Sheriff Eggum had no idea what that “something” could be, but he thought it might be what made Lance Hansen such a loner.
Then he pushed all those thoughts aside. Lance wasn’t his responsibility, after all. He felt he had things under control now. The crime scene had been cordoned off. Not far from the tent they’d found the canoe belonging to the two Norwegians. The surviving man, who was still in no condition to be questioned, had been transported to the hospital in Duluth. According to the doctor, the other man had died sometime between one and four o’clock in the morning. A team of homicide investigators was already on its way north from St. Paul. Bill Eggum had done his job; now it was just a matter of waiting for the experts.
He chuckled as one of the hosts on Car Talk suggested that the caller should sell her car to an animal lover. He was in a good mood, in spite of the grisly murder they had just discovered. Only two months from now his retirement would begin, and then he was thinking of spending as little time as possible with his wife. Not that he wasn’t fond of her; on the contrary, she was a wonderful woman, and he didn’t know what he would do without her. That was why he was worried about Lance, who had no one to talk to about difficult matters like this. Crystal Eggum had always been the only person the sheriff could confide in. He was able to tell her what an awful toll it took on him to see young people who’d been killed in car wrecks. Or his thoughts about all the domestic violence he’d been forced to witness. Crystal was a fabulous woman. Even so, he was looking forward to being alone for days on end in the little cabin over by Dumbbell Lake. Just him and his fishing gear. And a radio so he could listen to Car Talk. Finally he was going to have time to fish as much as he liked. He hadn’t done that since he was a kid, which was close to fifty years ago. It’s actually been more like a fifty-year interruption, he thought. A boy goes out fishing and has a lot of fun, and then suddenly one day his whole boring adult life starts up, with all its obligations. Fifty years later the interruption is finally over, and he can go bac
k to fishing again.
Most of this boring period of time Bill Eggum had spent on the police force—the past twenty-five years as sheriff of Cook County. Not a single murder had been committed in all those twenty-five years. Until now. He didn’t really know what to make of it. Murder by an unknown perpetrator. Although the other Norwegian was most likely the guilty party. It probably wasn’t any more complicated than that. Even so, here he sat, waiting for a team of homicide detectives from St. Paul. No matter what, this was the biggest case of his career, and he wanted everything to be looking good for the detectives when they arrived. They would see that the sheriff of Cook County knew how to handle the situation.
He cast another glance at the bunch of officers chatting in the sunshine of the parking lot. It was about time to send most of them home. But just as he was about to open the car door, his cell phone rang. It was the man from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul. He claimed there was some confusion about the information that Eggum had supplied when he called in the murder. A police officer working for the Forest Service had found the victim, was that right? Yes, that was right, Eggum told him. And since they were in Cook County, this officer must work for Superior National Forest, right? Yes, he did. But did this mean that the crime scene was located inside the borders of the forest? the man asked. Eggum had to admit that he hadn’t thought about that. The man said that he’d better start thinking about it now.
The sheriff squeezed his fat body out of the car and irritably yelled for Lance Hansen, who was still standing out on the rocks with Sparky Redmeyer. Both men turned around. Eggum shouted for Lance to come over. The rest of the officers who were gathered in the parking area looked at Eggum with interest.
“It’s been a busy morning up here,” he apologized to the man in St. Paul. “Okay, here comes the guy who found the body.”
Lance stopped a few feet away and ran his fingers through his straight, sandy-colored hair. “What’s up?” he said.
“Do you know whether the crime scene is on federal land?” asked the sheriff.
“Yes, it is.”
“Okay, I heard that,” said the man on the phone. “And federal land means federal agents,” he went on, as if the sheriff wouldn’t realize this himself. “So this is a matter for the FBI, not us. I’ll see that they’re informed. Try to be good hosts to them.”
Eggum swore quietly as he ended the conversation. “The FBI has jurisdiction,” he said. Lance didn’t look particularly interested, but the sheriff’s deputies, who were lounging around the police cars, seemed amused by their boss’s blunder.
“All right, people!” Eggum shouted. “Time to make yourselves useful! Redmeyer and Jones will stay here with me. The rest of you can head out. Go back to whatever you were doing before we were called out. If you were doing anything at all, that is.”
A couple of the men laughed, but then realized this was no time for amusement. Five of the officers got into three cars, and soon the small procession slowly began making its way up narrow Baraga Cross Road and disappeared. Remaining were Sheriff Eggum, Sparky Redmeyer, Mike Jones, and Lance Hansen.
“Well, what do you know,” said the youngest officer, Mike Jones. “You can say that again,” said Bill Eggum.
“A murder,” said Redmeyer. “A murder in Cook County.”
The others nodded somberly.
“Has this ever happened before?” asked young Jones, turning to the sheriff.
“Not on my watch as sheriff, at any rate,” said Eggum. “Lance, you probably know whether there’s ever been a murder here before.”
Lance shook his head. “Not as far as I know,” he said. “But it seems strange,” he added. “This couldn’t be the first murder in Cook County, could it?”
“Why not?” said Sparky Redmeyer.
“Why not? Well . . . don’t you think it would be strange if it was?”
“No,” said Redmeyer. “It would be even stranger if this turned out not to be the first murder in these parts.”
Lance pointed toward the crime scene among the birch trees. “So you think this is the first one?”
“Yes,” said Redmeyer. “You said yourself that you’ve never heard of any other murder happening around here. Wouldn’t you know about it? You, with all your journals and old documents?”
Lance shook his head. “no,” he said. “Or rather, yes . . . but no . . . no, that can’t possibly be true.”
Sheriff Eggum cleared his throat. “Right now none of that is important,” he said. “What’s important is who bashed in the skull of the canoeist from the old country? That’s something we’re going to let the FBI figure out.”
“When do you think they’ll get here?” asked Sparky.
“Well, let’s see,” said Eggum. He lifted his hat and scratched his bald scalp. “Sometime this afternoon, I’d guess.”
“Would you mind if I took off?” asked Lance. “I should write up my report as soon as possible.”
The sheriff gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder. “You go ahead,” he said. “You’ve done a terrific job today.”
Lance made a noise that sounded like an amused snort. “Well, see you guys,” he said, and walked over to his pickup.
The other three watched him go. He got in and closed the door, leaning his left elbow on the frame of the open window. As he started the truck, Sheriff Eggum set off running. His short, stout body moved much faster than anyone would have believed possible; there was something almost unnatural about it. Redmeyer and Jones snickered. When Eggum reached the pickup, he stuck his flushed face in the window.
“Hansen,” he panted.
“Yes?” said Lance.
The sheriff’s gaze shifted. “What a way to start the day, huh?” Lance nodded.
“If there’s anything . . . ,” the sheriff went on, but he clearly had no idea how to finish the sentence. “If there’s anything, all you have to do is . . . you just have to . . . this has been a tough go-round.”
“I’m really fine,” Lance reassured him.
“Okay, I just wanted to . . . just in case.”
“Thanks, but I’m really okay.”
“All right, good, we’ll leave it at that,” said Eggum as he straightened up. He rapped his knuckles twice on the roof of the truck, as if knocking on wood. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.
3
WHEN LANCE GOT BACK TO THE RANGER STATION, he made it only as far as the bottom of the basement stairs before he realized that everyone already knew what had happened. He didn’t feel like asking how they’d found out. Tofte was one of those places where people called to tell you to get better before you even knew you were under the weather.
Deb Larson, the head accountant, was standing in the doorway to the office area. She was just standing there, gawking. A moment later Becky Tofte appeared behind her. Then Peggy Winters popped up. Three frightened yet inquisitive faces stared at him from the doorway.
Lance gave them a nod and then attempted to continue down the corridor to his own small office, as if it were a normal day. But it was no use. Becky grabbed his arm with both hands and held on tight. Even though he’d known her all his life, he found it embarrassing to stand there like that, held in her grip.
“Poor Lance,” she whispered several times.
He realized that for now he might as well give up any idea of writing his report. He had no choice but to follow them into the office area. There he had to tell them all about what had gone on that morning, from the time he said good-bye to Zimmerman and Mary Berglund until the moment he returned.
As he talked, new people kept showing up in the basement. Many of them Lance didn’t know, including young summer hires from Minneapolis and St. Paul, plus additional firefighters who had been sent south from Alaska because of the high fire danger in Minnesota that summer. But most he’d known for years.
Since more people kept joining the group, he ha
d to tell the story several times. Finally there were nearly thirty people gathered in the room, and the sole topic of conversation was the dramatic events that had just occurred over near Baraga’s Cross. No one could agree on who the guilty party might be. Some thought the Norwegian had killed his companion, plain and simple. Others were convinced someone had tried to murder both men but succeeded in killing only one. Mary Berglund, the receptionist, thought it had something to do with drugs, though she couldn’t explain any further. Becky Tofte said she didn’t believe for a minute that a Norwegian would kill a fellow countryman, which brought a laugh from John Zimmerman. And then there was the fact that both men had been naked. One of the guys from Alaska thought that was the strangest thing of all. Two men running around naked in the woods!
The whole station was feeling the effects of the extraordinary circumstances. Only Mary was still doing any work. She ran up and down the stairs to check if any tourists had appeared, in need of information. Soon she was able to inform the group that news of the murder had reached the media. “It’s on the radio—everybody knows about it now!” she shouted, her cheeks flushed.
Zimmerman said he’d go upstairs and personally handle any contact with the public. Right after he left the room, they heard him pause on the stairs to speak to someone. Lance recognized his brother’s voice.
“He’s down there,” he heard Zimmerman say, and a moment later Andy Hansen appeared in the doorway.
Several of those present knew him well and said hi. He was a thin, sinewy man in his early forties. Like his taller and heavier brother, he was starting to lose his hair. But unlike Lance, who always made sure to comb his hair smoothly back, Andy wore his hair long, as if trimmed with a bowl on his head. He had on worn jeans and a faded T-shirt that said “Twins Baseball” on the front.
“So, Lance,” he said, looking at his brother, who was two years older. “How are you doing?”
The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy) Page 2