Lance got up and again went over to the archive shelves, taking down a binder containing only a few pages. These were lists of the individuals who had held various positions in Cook County over the years, including the job of newspaper editor. He soon found what he was looking for: Albert DeLacy Wood, 1891 to July 1892; Chris Murphy, July 1892 to October 1894.
Albert DeLacy Wood, who was the first editor of the Grand Marais Pioneer, had left the position in July 1892, after Swamper Caribou disappeared. In early September, when the body was found near the Manitou River, the new editor had been in Grand Marais for little more than a month. He might not have known about Swamper’s disappearance, or maybe he thought that one less Indian was not worth mentioning.
In any case, the whole story contributed nothing to Lance’s search for a murder. He thought it most likely that the Indian had died in a drowning accident. That is, if the body found near Manitou River was, in fact, Swamper Caribou.
He wondered whether he should start reading the police reports and court documents from the period 1895 to 1905, when the John Schroeder Lumber Company ran what was still the biggest logging operation on the North Shore. At its peak, the company employed more than a thousand men, who were quartered in barracks in a camp that had two saloons and a whorehouse where the men could rapidly be relieved of their wages.
But Lance didn’t feel like reading the documents right now. It was nine forty, and he still hadn’t written more than a few lines of his report. He needed to finish it before morning. And besides, it would help him to formulate his answers before his meeting with the FBI.
He looked at the brief paragraph that he’d written so far. At one fifteen he’d received a call from a woman who had seen a tent down by the lake, not far from Baraga’s Cross. She and a male companion had been out in a boat at the time. It was illegal to pitch a tent outside the U.S. Forest Service designated camp areas, which did not include that particular spot. But Lance hadn’t had a chance to check it out, since he was all the way up at Gunflint Lake when he got the call. He was busy checking on fishing licenses, and that took up the rest of his workday. Afterward he went home to shower and change his clothes before setting off on the almost two-hour drive to Duluth to visit his mother in the nursing home where she now lived. When he got back, around ten, he stretched out on the sofa and promptly fell asleep. There was nothing else to report about yesterday.
Or was there?
He realized that by now he’d had enough of sitting in the cramped office. With a heavy sigh he got up and went out to the hall, where he put on his shoes and his Vikings cap.
THE MOON WAS ABOUT A DAY SHORT OF BEING FULL. A gleaming streak of moonlight extended from the horizon almost all the way to the tips of his shoes. It was so wide that it splintered into thousands of tiny flashes glinting off the waves in front of him. On both sides of the moonlight the water was a deep purple that was almost black. He stood there, looking out across the lake without really seeing it.
And what was there actually to see? Only a vast void and this shimmering moonlight path. That was Lake Superior at the moment. In addition to the faint gurgling sound that seemed to envelop him.
Many of Lance’s ancestors had spent their lives on this lake after coming here from Norway. They had made their living from logging, fishing, mining, boatbuilding, home construction, or whatever else might put a few dollars in their pockets and food on the table. And they had survived. Most of their descendants, including Lance, were people who largely subsisted just one notch above poverty. And they never moved much beyond that. Sometimes he thought the pioneers had sacrificed much more than the value of the average way of life in America.
Take Thormod Olson, for example, the nephew of Knut Olson, who had married the French Canadian Nanette. Thormod was fifteen when he arrived in the New World all alone. He had first traveled by ship from Bergen to Hull, where he boarded a train for Liverpool. Then by ship from Liverpool to New York. From there he went by train and stagecoach through the United States and Canada to Duluth. And he did all that without knowing more than a smattering of English words. When he finally reached Duluth, he still had ahead of him the eighty-mile trip up to his uncle’s pioneer cabin at the base of Carlton Peak, where the little community of Tofte is located today. At the time, winter was just giving way to spring, and his uncle had made arrangements for him to be given lodging in the house of an acquaintance in Duluth so that young Thormod would have someplace to live while he waited for the ice to melt from the Lake Superior coastline. Then he’d be able to take the steamship Dixon up to Carlton Peak. But the fifteen-year-old had no intention of sitting around in a room in town. Equipped with a pair of snowshoes, he began hiking north along the coast. In the light of the moon he was even able to continue his trek at night. A couple of days after Thormod set out from Duluth, there was a knock on the door of the small log cabin near Carlton Peak. When Knut Olson opened it, his fifteen-year-old nephew fell into the room, stiff as a board. The boy was completely shrouded in a coating of ice, which shattered into a thousand pieces when he hit the floor.
To save time, he had walked on the frozen lake, crossing many of the bays between Duluth and Carlton Peak. Then on the last night he had fallen through the ice. It was bitterly cold, and it really shouldn’t have been possible to survive a night in the woods after taking a plunge in the frigid water. At least that was what Lance had always heard. But young Thormod did survive, although he was nearly dead. His uncle and Nanette saved his life and nursed him back to health.
Lance had heard this story countless times as he was growing up. It was the primordial myth in his family. “That’s the stuff we’re made of,” his father the policeman had once told him, even though he himself had no blood relationship to Thormod.
Today there were, in fact, descendants of Thormod Olson living in large parts of Minnesota, and undoubtedly in other states as well. But as far as Lance knew, none of them had ever done anything that was particularly noteworthy. Yet it seemed highly unlikely that young Thormod would have given a single thought to any possible descendants on that night when he was fighting for his life.
Lance stood there gazing out at the same lake in which Thor-mod had nearly drowned before even beginning his life in America. He himself had lived his whole life near the lake. His father, Oscar Hansen, had been on the Duluth police force. Lance and Andy had grown up in that steep-sloped city near the westernmost point of Lake Superior.
He thought about how his brother’s presence at the ranger station had somehow seemed to him the last straw, although he had no idea why. He felt as if he could handle everything else that he’d been through during the day, but not the fact that Andy had shown up.
He should have called him when he got back from Duluth last night, after visiting their mother in the nursing home. He remembered now that he’d even thought about phoning him this morning but decided it was too early to do that. Then he’d found the naked man and discovered the murder, and he’d forgotten all about his brother, who had turned off the highway and driven down to Baraga Cross Road.
“Good Lord . . . ,” he whispered.
It was on the previous evening that Lance had come driving north from Duluth. When he approached the turnoff to Baraga’s Cross, he saw his brother take the exit from the highway.
Now he remembered Andy’s words from earlier in the day: “I’ve been out at the cabin since yesterday afternoon. Went out in the boat and fished until midnight.”
But it was his brother’s car that he’d seen, a white Chevy Blazer with a red door on the right-hand side. Inside he’d clearly seen Andy’s gaunt, pinched face. And the car had disappeared down Baraga Cross Road.
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT. The North Shore was cloaked in darkness. In small communities like Tofte and Lutsen, all the inhabitants were now asleep. They had to get up early the next morning, Thursday. They were hardworking people with ordinary lives, and they seldom encountered any big sur
prises. They watched Tv in the evening. The women had their knitting clubs, the men went on fishing trips. On the weekend they might drive to Duluth to shop at the mall. Maybe they’d take the kids to see a movie before they made the two-hour drive back north along the shoreline.
But on this day something unexpected had happened.
By now almost everyone had heard about the murder near Baraga’s Cross. And it had probably been on their mind before they fell asleep, since now there was a murderer among them. They thought about their children. The children thought about their parents. Maybe some people also thought about the cross. Baraga’s Cross. Maybe they pictured it standing there near the lake.
In the house on the ridge above Isak Hansen’s hardware store Lance lay in bed with his eyes closed, feeling sleep approaching like a wave rolling toward shore, and the shore was himself and his thoughts. For a moment his thoughts were almost obliterated by the wave.
Then the teeth reappeared and he gave a start. Those white teeth in the mass of blood and hair. He wasn’t scared, but he couldn’t get rid of the image of those teeth. Just as he couldn’t get rid of the thought of Andy driving down Baraga Cross Road. There couldn’t possibly be any connection between the two things. Between his brother and the gruesome image of the dead man. But what was Andy doing at the cross so late at night? And why had he lied about it?
It seemed to Lance like a waking dream. The thought made him smile as he lay there. His last dream had been seven years ago. In that dream he was walking along the bottom of Lake Superior. He could breathe underwater, and it was as easy to walk as on land. The bottom sloped downward as he moved. In places he had to climb over steep cliffs. But the light never faded beyond dusk down there; it never got completely dark. Finally he reached the deepest spot in the lake. There it was very bright. The water was as clear as air, and just as easy to move through. All around him were huge icebergs, shimmering blue. The ground beneath his feet was solid ice. It was a world of ice down there, and so cold that it felt like the marrow in his bones was turning to slush. He was sure he’d never be able to reach the surface again.
But then he woke up, cold and sweating. Next to him lay Mary, sleeping calmly. It was dawn on a summer day. Outside the window, behind the drawn curtains, he could hear a bird singing.
Lance got out of bed and crept through the dimly lit room, over to the baby’s crib. He could just barely make out the tiny head resting on the pillow. He leaned down and listened. He stood like that, bending over the crib until he was sure the boy was breathing.
He still recalled every detail so clearly. He even remembered that the bird singing outside the window was a white-throated sparrow.
Since that day he hadn’t dreamed at all. Of course he’d read that everybody dreams, whether they’re aware of it or not, but what does it mean to dream if you’re not aware of it? The only dreams that count are those you remember having. And Lance hadn’t had a single dream in more than seven years. He was absolutely sure of it, because for a long time he’d hoped that he would dream about the bottom of Lake Superior again. There was something enticing about that deep, ice-cold, shimmering blue place. So when he woke up in the morning, he always tried to recall whether he’d dreamed of anything in the night. But he soon realized that he was having no dreams whatsoever, and that was when he stopped waiting for a new dream about the bottom of the lake and began instead to wait for any type of dream at all. But none came. Not even a sense that he’d dreamed of something but quickly forgotten it.
Lance had never told anyone about this. It was too strange, almost unreal. He wasn’t like other people. Some had lots of dreams, while others dreamed only once in a while, but Lance never dreamed at all. For him, sleep was merely a nothingness that repeated itself every night. Always the same deep, dreamless sleep. And now it came washing over him. His thoughts were a shore where something had been written in the sand, but now the words were erased by the waves.
5
JUST BEFORE ELEVEN ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Lance knocked on the door of the conference room in the Bluefin Bay Resort. He heard footsteps approaching, and then the door opened. A younger man stood there.
“FBI?” Lance hesitantly asked.
“yes.”
“I was asked to . . . I was the one who found the body.”
“Of course. Come in.”
The man closed the door behind them and then held out his hand. “Bob Lecuyer,” he said. “I’m in charge of the investigation.”
“Lance Hansen.”
Lecuyer went over to the long conference table in the middle of the room. A lot of documents were spread out on the table, along with several newspapers. He sat down in front of an open laptop.
“Have a seat.”
Lance sat down across from him. It looked like Lecuyer was busy reading something on the computer screen. He reminded Lance of a bank teller. Close-cropped dark hair, light-blue shirt, wristwatch, wedding ring, and at least ten years younger than himself.
After a moment Lecuyer looked up. “Are you some sort of local historian?” he asked.
“Not really. I have an archive, but . . . ”
“Exactly. so you’re the local historian. And that means you must know more about this place than most people.”
“Just things about the past. That’s all I know about.”
“But that could be interesting too. We never know until we get started. I’m sure you know how it is. You’re a police officer, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“So, shall we begin?”
Lance nodded.
Lecuyer leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. “Tell me everything,” he said.
AN HOUR LATER Lance was on his way to Sawbill Lake, where his cousin Gary Hansen had a canoe rental business. He usually dropped by to have a chat with Gary about once a week. He really should have gone out to Grouse Creek to check on a couple of teenagers who had apparently been riding their off-road four-wheelers outside the marked trails. All part of a typical workday for Lance Hansen. But his meeting with Lecuyer had made him uneasy. He’d answered the FBI man’s questions as accurately as he could, but when he was asked whether he knew of any suspicious activity occurring in the area around Baraga’s Cross, he had emphatically shaken his head and said no. And yet he knew a car had driven down Baraga Cross Road just before ten o’clock on Tuesday evening, meaning only a few hours before the murder. He also knew the driver of the car had shown up at the Tofte ranger station on the following day, claiming that he’d been at Lost Lake all night.
As Lance sat there in the conference room, he pictured once again the shattered skull. The teeth. The tufts of hair. And he pictured his brother. Those two images belonged to two different worlds, which for some inexplicable reason were on the verge of colliding. But one thing he did know: it was up to him to prevent it from happening.
The part of Superior National Forest that is a protected wilderness area begins at Sawbill Lake. A boundary passes through the entire forest. North of that line, no motorized vehicles are permitted, and not even the tiniest hut can be built. There isn’t a single foot of roadway, and all hunting is forbidden. In vast sections, the trees haven’t been cut in close to a hundred years. In fact, some parts have never been logged at all. The entire area would have been inaccessible if it weren’t for the water—and the canoe. That ingenious, simple vessel that from time immemorial had carried human beings through these woods.
Lance got out of his car in the parking lot in front of North-woods Outfitters, run by his cousin Gary. There were plenty of other cars in the lot. He saw Gary in full swing, instructing some first-time paddlers on how to lift a canoe onto their shoulders.
Lance gave him a wave and went into the shop, where it was possible to buy everything from matches to a six-man tent. He looked at some books that were for sale: Birding Minnesota, Minnesota’s Geology, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Canoeing
and Kayaking, The Singing Wilderness.
It looked as if there were about a dozen seasonal employees hired for the summer. His cousin’s business was clearly booming. Most of the young people seemed to be from the Twin Cities and had come here more because of the proximity to the wilderness than for the paltry wages Gary was paying them. Eco-youths, Lance thought to himself. Not that he had any negative associations with that term, just an impression of a group of kids who had a certain look about them and a certain set of opinions. Plus they were all wearing the blue T-shirts with the Northwoods Outfitters logo. They seemed so agile and lightweight as they slipped between the shelves and racks filled with gear. Lance felt heavy and torpid in comparison.
After a few minutes Gary appeared. “Hi. Need a canoe?” he said. Lance smiled. “No, I just thought I’d drop by, since I was in the neighborhood.”
He could see that his cousin was busy and not real happy about being interrupted. One of the young girls in a blue T-shirt was waving and calling his name. Lance wouldn’t have minded having a girl like that waving at him.
“Okay, I’ll be right there. Excuse me a minute, Lance.”
Lance looked around. One of the young shop clerks caught sight of him and came over.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” said Lance. But then he thought of something. “Well, actually, there is something.” He pointed at his name badge, which said Law Enforcement Officer.
The young guy in the blue T-shirt nodded eagerly. “Is this about the murder?” he asked.
“So you’ve heard about it?”
“Sure I’ve heard about it. That’s all people are talking about.
They came in here, you know. I remember them.”
The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy) Page 4