“I told them the two Norwegians had been in here. I had to do that. But I didn’t mention your brother. I know Andy. He does a lot of work around here, and I thought it would be stupid if he got mixed up in the case. He just happened to meet them here one evening, and sat and talked to them. But since you’re a police officer too, I figure now I’ve reported it to the police,” he said with a smile. “And if you think it’s necessary, you can pass the information on to the FBI.”
16
LANCE WAS SLAVING over a difficult math assignment he’d been given as homework. He was sitting in his room on the second floor, which had a view of a large section of downtown Duluth. A view he never bothered to stop and think about. That was just the way it looked from his window. Every day new ships would sail into town down there, and the old Aerial Bridge would be raised and lowered. It was a Saturday in September, his last year in high school, and he had pretty much made up his mind to become a policeman, like his dad. So he was trying his utmost to get the grades that were required for admittance to the police academy in Minneapolis. That was why he often stayed in his room to study on Saturday evenings, like he was doing now.
He had no idea where his brother, who was two years younger, was at the moment. And he didn’t care. Andy had his own friends. Maybe they were over in Lester Park, on the outskirts of town, where the Lester River forms idyllic little pools and waterfalls. Lance didn’t know what they would be doing there. Maybe playing music on those big boom boxes of theirs. Andy and his friends could spend a whole evening sitting on benches in Leif Erikson Park, down by the lake, apparently doing nothing at all. Other times they played baseball in the schoolyard at Duluth Central, which was the high school both brothers attended.
Lance could hear the sound of the TV from downstairs. His parents must be watching some boring sitcom. It was a typical Saturday night. So typical that he never would have remembered it if everything normal hadn’t abruptly been shattered in the most violent manner.
The sound of a car door, someone running across the gravel in front of the house. Before Inga had time to poke her head out in the hall to see who it was, the person had bounded up the stairs to the second floor in three or four strides. Lance got up. At that instant Matt Johnson, who was one of Andy’s friends, appeared in the doorway. He looked scared out of his wits.
“You need to come,” he said. “Andy has totally flipped out!”
“What do you mean?” asked Lance.
But Matt just reached out toward Lance and gripped his arm so hard it hurt.
“You need to come now!” he said, and started pulling him out of the room.
Lance stuffed his feet in his running shoes and then followed Matt downstairs.
Inga was standing in the hallway, staring at them with a worried expression. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Matt, who was usually such a polite boy, again grabbed Lance by the arm and tried to drag him out the door before he had time to answer his mother’s question.
“I don’t know,” said Lance.
“Is it something to do with Andy?” she asked. “Has something happened to Andy?”
“I don’t know!” Lance repeated.
Matt had already yanked open the car door. He turned around and yelled, “Come on, for God’s sake!”
Lance ran over to the car and jumped in the passenger seat. As they sped off, he saw Inga standing on the doorstep with one hand raised to her mouth.
Afterward he could never recall what he was thinking as they drove much too fast through the streets on their way to the high school. Nor did he remember whether he and sixteen-year-old Matt Johnson exchanged any words, although Matt must have filled him in on the situation. Because what Lance did remember quite clearly was jumping out of the car and racing onto the big, blacktop area as he shouted his brother’s name. He could even remember the way his voice resonated in the deserted schoolyard.
Over by the entrance to the toilets he caught sight of Clayton Miller. He was on the ground, with his legs sticking out to the side, his back slumped. His long bangs hung down in his face. Lance could see that he was taking quick, shallow breaths, and he realized at once that the boy was injured. Andy was nowhere to be seen. Thin, black-haired Clayton Miller was the only person in the whole schoolyard.
Lance started running across the open space. Matt stayed near the gate, looking scared. Just as Lance had almost reached the tall, ungainly boy who was down on the ground, Andy suddenly came around the corner of the building. He was holding a baseball bat in his right hand. When he caught sight of his older brother, he stopped. Lance did too. His brother’s face didn’t look the way it usually did, and at that instant it occurred to Lance that Andy looked completely alone. Like somebody who is so alone he no longer knows what to do with himself. That was what Lance saw in his eyes and his face.
Neither of them spoke; they just stood there, staring at each other. The only sound in the schoolyard was the gasping, spasmodic breathing of Clayton Miller. Then Andy shifted his grip on the bat to hold it with both hands, ready to strike, and he started walking toward Clayton. But Lance knew he wouldn’t do it. He could tell by the way his brother was walking. Andy had realized that everything was now under control because his big brother had arrived. He knew that he could approach Clayton with the bat raised, and Lance would find some way to intervene, to prevent him from doing more harm. Lance was not afraid of his younger brother. When he moved toward Andy, he didn’t even consider the possibility that Andy might use that dangerous weapon against him. Lance simply went over and took hold of the bat. Andy stopped. Lance didn’t try to wrest the bat away from him; he simply held on to it, passively.
“Let go,' said Lance calmly.
And his brother let go.
The Hansen brothers stood there like that for a couple of seconds, looking each other in the eye. Lance saw that Andy wanted to say something. Maybe offer an explanation for what had gone on there.
“I . . . he . . . ,' he said, but that was all.
He turned on his heel and headed for the gate. After a few yards, he started to run. Matt Johnson got into the car and drove off before Andy could reach him. Lance watched his brother run out the gate without looking back. Then he finally went the few remaining yards over to the injured boy, who was now curled up in a fetal position on the asphalt.
Lance put down the bat and squatted down next to Clayton. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“I think I’ve got a punctured lung,” Clayton whispered.
Now Lance could see how pale he was.
“Are you his brother?”
Lance nodded.
“He tried to kill me . . . ” Then Clayton started crying.
Lance, who now realized that the most important thing was to get help, told Clayton to lie still. Then he ran to the nearest public phone and called the medics.
It’s not far from Duluth Central High School to St. Luke’s Hospital, so when he got back to the schoolyard, the ambulance had already arrived. He watched as the medics carried Clayton away on a stretcher.
It turned out that he did have a punctured lung, which was blamed on two broken ribs. Lance found this out later from his classmates, who thought, almost without exception, that it was high time someone taught Clayton Miller a lesson. He’d also lost a tooth, from being punched or kicked in the mouth. Lance remembered that sometime later in the fall Oscar Hansen, their father, had held up Clayton’s dental bill to show Andy, and he asked his younger son whether he had any idea how much overtime he was going to have to work to pay the bill. Lance didn’t recall the details of how the matter was handled, and he probably never asked. Yet Andy suffered no consequences from this incident, which had to be because their father was on the police force. Oscar Hansen must have pulled some strings. Clearly he’d also had a talk with Clayton’s parents and had come to some sort of agreement with them. The dental bill was not referred to an attorney b
ut was dealt with directly and discreetly by the two families involved. Perhaps a doctor bill too, depending on what kind of health insurance Clayton may have had. But he must have had a good medical plan, since he came from a well-to-do family. Wasn’t his father a professor at the College of St. Scholastica? It was something like that.
The only time Lance ever talked to Clayton was when he was lying on the blacktop in the schoolyard. But he still remembered a couple of things about the boy. For instance, the other kids claimed that knitting was one of his favorite hobbies. In the winter he wore long, multicolored scarves, which he had apparently knit himself. It was also rumored that he wrote poetry, which Lance could easily believe. Clayton was definitely the type. Later on, after high school, he was actually in a band that had a lot of success. Clayton Miller was the lead singer, wasn’t he? But what Lance remembered most was that everyone thought Clayton was gay. Even before Andy beat him up, Lance had heard somebody say that Clayton Miller was gay. That was why Lance knew who he was, that gay kid who knit his own scarves. And later on Lance always assumed that had to be the only imaginable reason why Andy had done what he did. It had something to do with the fact that Clayton Miller was gay, or at least that everybody thought he was. Lance had always thought that Andy would have killed Clayton if he and Matt Johnson hadn’t arrived in time. You don’t just tap somebody on the head with a baseball bat; you use it to bash in his skull. And he’d already punctured the boy’s lung, probably by kicking him as he lay on the ground. It was a true display of extreme violence. And from a boy who never hit anyone, other than when the two brothers used to play at fighting when they were younger. The teenaged Andy Hansen was a quiet, slightly withdrawn boy. If he changed at all after the incident with Clayton Miller, it was that he became even more withdrawn. It was as if he retreated into himself, even when he was in the middle of a crowd. But he never exhibited any sign of violence again. At least not as far as Lance knew.
What Lance remembered most from the whole Clayton Miller affair, and what he could never forget, was the look on Andy’s face as he stood there, holding the baseball bat in his hands and staring at his big brother. It was the face of someone who was so alone that he had no idea what to do with himself. And that was the expression that Lance saw again twenty-eight years later when he visited his brother in Two Harbors and talked about the murder at Baraga’s Cross.
17
EIRIK NYLAND HAD DELIBERATELY OMITTED telling Bob Lecuyer that he was going to visit Lance Hansen. You never know what might come up if you have a beer with a witness, he thought, and if you know something the others don’t, it’s a lot harder for them to fool you. Not that he distrusted Lecuyer. That just happened to be what he was thinking.
After eating an early dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, he got into his rental car and drove the couple of miles up to Isak Hansen’s hardware store. He had considered getting a cab and bringing along a bottle of Gammel Opland, but he decided that would be overdoing things. It was only a Thursday evening, after all.
He was in a good mood. The workday had ended with useful, though not exactly surprising, news confirming that the semen found in Lofthus’s stomach was from Bjørn Hauglie. Now they were just waiting for the results from the Chicago lab that was analyzing the evidence taken from the crime scene. If the results contained no trace of a third person, they would arrest Hauglie and charge him with the murder of Georg Lofthus. Either way, they would soon have to confront him with the fact that he had lied.
But at the moment Nyland was parking his rented Subaru next to Hansen’s black Jeep. Then he got out. The house was painted the same shade of green used by the U.S. Forest Service. Several pieces of patio furniture and a barbecue stood on a covered deck. Farther out on the lawn was a hammock. A toy bulldozer lay toppled over on its side near the doorstep. There was a lovely view of the lake. As Nyland began walking toward the house, the front door opened and Lance Hansen came out.
“Hi, and welcome!” he said, holding out his hand when Nyland was still a few yards away.
They greeted each other warmly.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” said Nyland, casting a glance at the view.
“Can’t complain.”
Nyland looked around. “Does your family own the store down there?”
“One of my cousins. It was started in 1930 by my grandfather, the year after he arrived from Norway.”
“Was he the one from Levanger?”
“Yep.”
“Your father’s father?”
“That’s right.”
Nyland again felt the sense of rapport that he’d noticed during their drive from the airport a week ago. He didn’t know why, but he felt more at ease with Lance Hansen than with many people he’d known for years.
“Do you know when your relatives emigrated?” asked Lance.
“No, I haven’t got a clue.”
“So what was their last name?”
“I know this sounds ridiculous, but I don’t even know that.”
“Hmm . . . ,” said Lance. “There’s not really much to go on then.”
“No, there isn’t,” Nyland agreed.
“If you want to come into my office, I can show you a few good websites, but if you don’t even have a last name . . . ”
“Well, maybe I’d better try to dig up some names when I get back home. Then I can e-mail them to you.”
“Sure. You’re welcome to do that.”
They stood there, looking down at the hardware store that Lance’s grandfather had started.
“I wonder what would make a man decide to emigrate and leave everything familiar behind,” mused Nyland.
“It was hard to find work in Norway in 1929. Times were tough here too, but at least this was a much bigger country, with more opportunities. Plus, I think he must have had a certain thirst for adventure. He was young and single, after all.”
“Do you think he ever had any regrets?”
“Hard to say. Especially since I’ve never cut the bonds the way he did, you know.”
Nyland took this as an invitation to talk about personal things, about life in general.
“So do you think you could have done what he did?” he asked cautiously, trying to indicate that he didn’t mean to pry.
Lance looked like he was giving the question serious consideration. Nyland noticed that an almost imperceptible smile appeared on his face for a moment and then vanished.
“Not in the past, but I’m not so sure anymore,” he said.
“Oh? Any particular reason for that?”
“No, I guess I’m just getting old,” said Lance.
That sounds like a retreat, thought Nyland. Maybe Lance felt he was getting too personal.
“And here I thought people got more and more set in their ways the older they got,” he remarked. “But maybe I’m wrong.”
“Set in their ways? Don’t you think people learn more as the years pass?” said Lance. “And maybe they end up learning something that suddenly weakens the bonds to everything familiar.”
Nyland wondered what he was really talking about now. Again it seemed like an invitation. He ventured another cautious question.
“And what would that be? What would weaken the bonds to things that are familiar?”
“People change, don’t they?” said Lance. “People get older, and they change.”
“The majority of people just stagnate in the image they’ve created for themselves, so to speak,” said Nyland.
He thought the conversation had taken a peculiar turn. Not uncomfortable, but definitely odd. Yet he had purposely initiated a discussion that would be about more than just their jobs or the weather. That was the effect Lance Hansen had on him. The man had a seriousness about him that did not invite small talk. A certain weightiness that was not merely physical. Nyland thought this was one of the reasons why he felt so at ease in the company of this local pol
iceman.
“All right, well, let’s have a beer instead,” Lance suddenly exclaimed. “Why don’t you take a seat over there?”
He pointed to the patio furniture on the covered deck. “I’ll go in and get us a couple of bottles.”
Nyland sat down on a plastic lawn chair while Lance went into the house. Through a nearby window that was open Nyland could hear the clink of bottles and glasses. He wondered whether it was a mistake to have come here, at least if he was hoping to find out anything of value to the investigation. Would Lance Hansen really withhold important information? He seemed more like a man having a midlife crisis, the type who starts thinking about buying himself a Harley. People get older, and they change, he thought, and had to grin.
Behind him he heard a door open and close. A moment later Lance reappeared, carrying two glasses and two bottles of beer.
“Here you go,” he said, sitting down. “Have you ever tasted Mesabi Red?”
“No. Is it a local brand?”
“From Duluth. One of my favorite beers.”
He filled both glasses and offered a toast. Then Eirik Nyland took a sip of the reddish beer, holding it in his mouth for a couple of seconds, to allow his taste buds to savor the taste before he swallowed. Mesabi Red tasted fresh and bitter at the same time. He couldn’t stop a sigh of contentment escaping from his lips.
Lance nodded. “Best beer in the world,” he said. “But I don’t drink it often. A man needs to keep a clear head. Especially in your line of work, I’d imagine.”
“Hmm, well, I’m no teetotaler,” said Nyland. “It’s just a matter of keeping the job and your free time separate, in my opinion.”
“Sure, sure,” said Lance. “But doesn’t the work demand . . . what should I say? A certain shrewdness? Being a homicide investigator, I mean.”
“Mostly it requires an ability to combine a lot of information in many different ways,” replied Nyland. “To see connections that others might not see. An ability to notice the little piece that does not fit the picture. That piece often says more about the case than all of the other pieces combined.”
The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy) Page 18