The Ravens (9 page)

“HEY,
SON!”

“Dad!”

Jimmy threw himself into his father’s arms. Standing on the porch, Mary smiled as she shivered in the cold. Lance smiled back over the head of their son.

“Did you have a good time in Norway?” she asked.

“No, it was boring.”

“Feel good to be back home?”

“Definitely! I’ll bring him back in a couple of hours,” said Lance as he set Jimmy down on the ground.

“Have fun.”

Father and son both gave her a wave before she turned on her heel and went back inside the house.

As they drove the short distance to Grand Portage Lodge and Casino, a big modern-looking building made of wood and glass, Jimmy talked nonstop about what he’d been up to lately, telling Lance about school and his grandfather and a mink that had come all the way up onto the porch and almost inside the house.

“I don’t think it knew how to find food on its own,” he said.

“Maybe it wanted to have dinner with the two of you,” said Lance.

“We had fish cakes.”

“See? What’d I tell you?”

FROM
THEIR
TABLE
they could look right into the gambling hall where a number of people were sitting in front of the slot machines. Lance thought the sound from the machines had something disproportionately childish about it, considering that most of the gamblers looked to be retirement age. Occasionally they also heard an avalanche of clattering coins followed by a shrill squeal if the winner was a woman; the men merely looked over their shoulders when they won.

Father and son were both eating ice cream. Outside the windows ice crystals glittered on the parked cars.

“What was it like in Norway?” Jimmy wanted to know.

“Cold.”

“Like here?”

“Yeah,” said Lance.

“So you could just as well have stayed home.”

“You’re right.”

“But now you’re back.”

“Yes, I am. Have you visited your grandma while I was gone?”

Jimmy shook his head as he ate.

“Would you like to go see her sometime soon?”

He nodded.

“Maybe you and I could take a drive down to Duluth together someday.”

“Sure. Can we go to the aquarium?”

“We’ll see.”

“Do you remember those big fish we saw there?”

“Sturgeon,” said Lance.

Then they both turned their attention back to their ice cream, but he noticed that the boy kept casting brief glances at him.

“Dad?” he said after a moment.

“Yes?”

“Are you tired?”

Lance put his spoon down on the napkin and looked at his son.

“Do I seem tired?”

Jimmy nodded.

“Well, I guess I am.”

“Do you have jet lag?”

“Do you know what jet lag is?” Lance was surprised.

“Uh-huh. It’s when you come back home from the other side of the world and take a dump like you’re . . .”

Lance had to laugh.

“But that’s what Dan Proudhom said.”

“Who’s that?”

“He goes to junior high.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. He’s Chad’s brother.”

“And you know Chad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what did Dan Proudhom say about jet lag?”

“He said that you take a dump like you’re on the other side of the world. In China, for example. Is that true?”

“Yeah, I take a dump like a Chinese guy now.”

Jimmy laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair.

AFTERWARD
they drove around Grand Portage for a while, which was one of Jimmy’s favorite things to do. Just rolling quietly through the narrow streets between the high snowbanks made by the plows. Lenny Diver was from here. That was the thing about Grand Portage—for those who came from here, was it less likely that the dice would roll in their favor on the day when it really mattered?

A white pickup came slowly toward them when they were almost back at Jimmy’s house. Lance noticed that it stopped a short distance down the road.

After making sure his son was safely inside, he drove back the same way they had come. The white pickup turned and again slowly approached. When they were almost level with each other, the driver stuck his arm out the open window and signaled for Lance to stop.

He pulled over and rolled down the window. There were two suspicious-looking men with long hair inside the truck.

“Are you that forest cop?” asked the driver.

His tone of voice was harsh, but he avoided looking Lance in the eye, as if he didn’t dare show his face.

“Yeah,” said Lance after a moment’s hesitation.

“The guy who found the Norwegian?”

“Huh?”

“At Baraga’s Cross?”

“Yeah. That was me.”

The man deliberately raised his index finger and slowly moved it from side to side, in a warning gesture.

“What is it you guys want?”

“You know,” he said.

“No, I don’t.”

Lance could hear how confused and pitiful his voice sounded.

“You can save Lenny,” said the other man, partially hidden behind the driver.

“Lenny?”

“Lenny Diver. You can save him. If you don’t, you’ll be cursed for all eternity. You and your whole family.”

The driver nodded, as if to underscore that they were serious. Then he rolled up his window and drove past.

WHEN
HE
WOKE
UP,
Lance thought at first that he’d dreamed something, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Bewildered, he sat up in bed and looked around. The bedroom didn’t seem familiar, as if he’d gone into the wrong house and fallen asleep in someone else’s bed. Then he remembered: the white pickup. But that was no dream. His heart began pounding at a hollow, uncomfortable gallop. He got up and pulled open the curtains. The dazzling light stung his eyes.

The clock radio on the nightstand said it was 10:41.

He put on his bathrobe and slippers and then shuffled out to the kitchen and switched on the coffeemaker. The house had warmed up since the heaters had all been going full-blast for hours, but the rooms still had an abandoned air about them, as if they hadn’t quite woken up from a long slumber.

Carrying his coffee cup, he went into the living room and sat down in his favorite chair. There he sat, squinting at the intense glitter coming off the snowy landscape outside the big picture window. Cars were soundlessly rushing past on the road below. His own Jeep Cherokee was parked in front of the red building that housed his cousin Rick’s hardware store. The road up to his home had been newly plowed. His cousin must have done it while Lance was asleep.

He took a few sips of the piping-hot coffee and felt an inkling of well-being start to emerge, but then he happened to think of those two men again.

“If you don’t, you’ll be cursed for all eternity. You and your whole family.”

Only now did the full consequences of what had happened dawn on Lance. Someone had threatened his family. Sick with worry, he got up and hurried down to the basement, where the ice-cold air nearly took his breath away. He unlocked the gun cabinet and took out his service pistol and some ammunition. Then he relocked the cabinet and ran back upstairs. For a moment he paused in the hallway, not sure what to do. Too many thoughts were lined up inside his head, like cars in rush-hour traffic, unable to move forward. Finally he put the gun and bullets on the little table in the hall and then went into the bathroom to take a shower.

THE
CRUSH
OF
THOUGHTS
had not diminished when he came out. He picked up his gun but then caught sight of himself in the mirror: a stark-naked, overweight man holding a gun in his hand. It was not a pretty sight, so he put the gun down and went into the bedroom where he got dressed without paying any attention to what he put on. When he sensed that he was fully clothed, he rushed back to the hall and again picked up the gun and ammunition. A quick glance in the mirror as he filled the magazine showed a man wearing heavy woolen socks, suit trousers, and a mossy green sweater that appeared to be on backward.

As he slammed the magazine into place, he heard the sound of a car coming up the hill toward the house. He cocked the gun; a bullet slid into the chamber. Then he checked to make sure the safety was on before he tucked the pistol into his waistband in front and pulled the loose sweater over it.

The car had stopped outside, but the engine was still running, and he hadn’t yet heard any car door open or close. He paused in the cramped front entryway to listen, but all he heard was the sound of the engine idling outside.

Lance turned the lock and opened the door.

Andy was sitting in his white Chevy Blazer only a few yards away. The two brothers hadn’t seen each other since that Sunday in November when Andy, who was standing on the bare rock near Baraga’s Cross, turned around and saw Lance taking aim at him. And later, the shot in the dark, when Lance’s rifle unexpectedly
fired—although for Andy it must have seemed like a deliberate attempt to kill him. So here he now sat, right out front, with a hint of a smile on his face. Or was it a sneer? Lance felt the pressure of the gun against his stomach. He tried to think rationally, but couldn’t do it. He merely stared at his brother, who stared back with that same little sneer on his lips. It was as if the world had suddenly become real again, boiled down to its purest form, and they knew it. They both did.

Calmly Andy raised his index finger and pointed it at his brother standing in the doorway. Lance waited for him to pull the trigger, as if firing an imaginary gun, but that didn’t happen. Andy simply lowered his finger and drove out of the yard, down the hill to the highway.

THE
FIRST
THING
Lance did after his brother’s brief visit was phone Chrissy. His niece was probably in the middle of a class at school, but he hoped that she’d call him back during a free moment when she saw that he was trying to get hold of her.

She picked up after a couple of rings.

“Hello?” she said tentatively.

“Chrissy?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Lance.”

“Huh?”

“Uncle Lance.”

“Oh.”

He could hear music thudding in the background.

“Are you at school?”

“What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Again?”

“It’s important.”

“Is this about the murder?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know anything except what I already told you.”

“But I do.”

“Oh.”

“When are you done with school?”

“Er . . . now.”

“Could I pick you up at the gas station again?”

“But aren’t you back from vacation? Officially, I mean?”

“So you heard about that, huh?”

“Grandma called.”

“Right. Well, I’m back, but what I’m working on is still secret. In fact, it’s even more secret. You didn’t tell anyone that you’d seen me, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Good. Shall we say that I’ll pick you up in two hours?”

THE
LAKE
was there the whole time. Occasionally it would disappear behind a stretch of woods, but soon it reappeared, endless and white in the dazzling sunshine under the blue sky. For the first time in ages he was able to drive along Highway 61 in broad daylight, and in spite of the difficult situation in which he found himself, Lance felt a sense of liberation, as if he’d returned to life after living a shadowy existence for more than two months. He felt with every fiber of his being that it was here he belonged, on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and nothing could make him leave again.

As a forest cop Lance Hansen had approximately the same relationship to his service pistol as to his uniform—it was something he put on each day before he went to work. It was part of his uniform, in fact. A few times he’d used it to put injured animals out of their misery, but that was all. Right now the gun was in the glove compartment of his own car, ready to be used in self-defense, if necessary.

He was not a free man.

CHRISSY
AND
LANCE
said very little to each other on the drive to Duluth. He assumed that was where she’d want to go. Or maybe to the Twin Cities, but that was too far. She seemed sullen and withdrawn, as if preoccupied with something else entirely. Lance wondered why she’d even agreed to meet him.

“The Kozy?” he asked, teasing her as they drove into the city.

“God, no,” groaned his niece.

“How about Fitger’s?”

“Okay.”

They parked and went inside the big brick building that still housed the legendary Fitger’s Brewhouse, although on a smaller scale than in the past, when it had been one of the largest in the region. These days it was a restaurant, yet it still had its own brewery that produced many of the types of beer available locally.

Lance and Chrissy found a table in a dark corner at the back of the pub, which was already more than half full.

“What’ll you have?” he asked her.

“What are you going to have?”

“A beer.”

“Then I’ll have one too,” she said.

He didn’t bother to reply, just stared at her, as if she still hadn’t answered his question.

“Okay, a Diet Sprite,” she said with a sigh. “I’m going to the restroom.”

Lance ordered her soda and a pint of Starfire Pale Ale for himself. Then he took them back to the table and sat down. He sipped the beer as he looked around the pub. Even though the place was fairly new, it looked as if it had been there since before World War II. Tons of supposedly old knickknacks and advertising posters adorned the walls, which appeared to be gray with smoke, even though it was unlikely that a single cigarette had ever been lit on the premises. Lance was impressed by how authentic the whole place looked.

When Chrissy came back, she seemed in a better mood.

“So, what did you want to talk to me about this time?” she said with interest as she leaned forward across the table.

“Yesterday I was stopped by two guys who threatened me.”

“Threatened you?”

She opened her eyes wide, feigning one of those exaggerated looks of surprise that she favored.

“They said that I could save Lenny Diver, and that if I didn’t, my whole family and I would be cursed for all eternity, or something like that.”

“Jesus!”

“Do you have any idea who they could be? It seems like you know people from more walks of life than most of the other family members do. Everything you tell me will be confidential, just between the two of us.”

“The only people I know in Grand Portage are Mary and Jimmy.”

“But when I saw you at the Kozy, you were with a girl and two guys who looked like they were Ojibwe.”

“Oh, them. No, Suzy was the one who knew them. I’d never seen them before.”

“What about the guys from the party at your cabin? The ones who saw the bloodstained man with the bat? Do you think they know Lenny Diver?”

“I doubt it. I think they’re from somewhere on the Range,” said Chrissy. “But what did those men mean when they said you could save Lenny Diver?”

Lance hesitated.

“It’s a long story, and I’ve never told it to anyone before. It actually started thirty years ago, here in Duluth. But for my part, it began last summer, on the night before the Norwegian tourist was killed. I’d gone to visit Inga. I was on my way home when I saw a guy I know driving down Baraga Cross Road.”

“Who was it?” asked Chrissy.

“Nobody you know. Apparently he didn’t recognize me, but he has a very distinctive appearance, so it’s impossible to mistake him for anyone else. I didn’t give it much thought, although it seemed a little strange for him to be driving down to Baraga’s Cross that late. It was around ten at night. The next day I found the body of the Norwegian only about a hundred yards away from the parking lot, and later in the day, when the news of the murder reached the media and everyone and his brother had heard about it, I saw that same guy again. He made a point of telling me that he’d spent the whole night at his cabin over by . . . well, I don’t remember where he said it was. But he said he hadn’t been anywhere near the lake and Baraga’s Cross. And I knew that was a lie.”

Lance paused to take a big gulp of his Starfire Pale.

“So you think he’s the one who did it?” asked Chrissy cautiously.

“Yes, I do.”

“But it sounds a bit vague, don’t you think?”

“Weren’t you the one who said that a man covered in blood and holding a baseball bat was seen outside Finland on that night?” said Lance.

“Yes, but . . .”

“A middle-aged white guy with an old junker for a car?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, the guy I’m talking about drives an old beater. I’m a hundred percent sure that he was driving down toward the cross at about ten that night, and for some reason he decided to lie about it and claim he was somewhere else.”

“That does sound suspicious,” Chrissy admitted. “But why would he kill a Norwegian tourist?”

“I think I know that too,” said Lance. “Remember I said that this story actually started here in town almost thirty years ago?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was a senior in high school. Your father was a sophomore. And the man I think is the murderer was a junior along with Clayton Miller.”

“
Clayton Miller?
What does he have to do with all this?”

“Nothing really, and yet he has everything to do with it,” Lance said. “As I was saying, they were in the same class, and the guy . . . let’s just call him the ‘murderer’ . . . he was gay. It’s not easy to talk about this, Chrissy. I’m very old-fashioned, but the murderer was in love with Clayton Miller, who was a very special kid.”

“Special in what way?” Chrissy interrupted him.

“He knitted his own scarves.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, he did. So of course everyone thought he was kind of strange. They all thought he was gay.”

“But Clayton Miller has a wife and kids,” said Chrissy.

“I know. They were wrong. It was the murderer who was gay, but of course he thought Miller was too. Everybody did. And one day the murderer wrote a note to Clayton. I don’t know what it said, but maybe it was some sort of declaration of love. And
Clayton Miller, who was not gay, laughed at what he’d written. And then the murderer attacked him. He knocked him down and kicked him as he lay on the ground. Punctured his lung. Kicked out his teeth. And then he went to get a baseball bat and came back to Miller, who was lying on the ground defenseless. But someone else showed up. An older boy. And he took the bat away. It was an extremely violent assault. I have no doubt that it would have ended in murder if the older boy hadn’t stopped it.”

“Was that what you wanted to talk to Clayton Miller about?” asked Chrissy.

“Yes. I wanted to ask him what could have provoked such anger. And that’s what he told me. But he refused to say what the murderer had written in the note. Did you know that the murdered Norwegian and his traveling companion were both gay?”

Chrissy raised a hand to her mouth in surprise.

“Lenny Diver has consistently maintained that he spent the night of the murder with a woman he met in a bar in Grand Marais. But he was so drunk he can’t recall what her name was. It sounded like a pretty implausible explanation, but what if it’s true? If that’s the case, then he was also drunk enough that the killer could have planted his fingerprints on the baseball bat and then hidden the bat in his car. And that’s what I think happened. The murderer just happened to come upon Lenny Diver. It must have seemed like a gift from heaven. Maybe the killer found him sleeping it off in his car the next day.”