The Land of Dreams

9

71 9 driving north on highway , Lance Hansen heard a brief portion of the FBI’s press conference on the car radio. It was ten after six, and the conference had evidently been recorded earlier. He hadn’t even known they were planning to hold a press conference. Now he heard Bob Lecuyer say they hadn’t yet made any arrests in the case. When asked whether Bjørn Hauglie was a suspect, Lecuyer replied that his only status was that of a witness. “But do you have any indications whatsoever that anyone else besides those two Norwegians was at Baraga’s Cross on that night?” asked a female journalist. “I can’t comment on that,” said Lecuyer. Then he added that they were waiting for the lab analysis of the blood that had been found at the crime scene, and they hoped this report would provide new angles to the case. The radio announcer then said, “The Norwegian police officer Eirik Nyland, who is in Cook County to assist the FBI and the local police, had the following to say about the extraordinary circumstances of investigating the murder of a Norwegian in the area that is sometimes jokingly called the ‘Scandinavian Riviera’”: “First of all, this is a tragic case . . . as is every homicide,” said Nyland, speaking with a typically British accent. “But the fact that this happened in Minnesota . . . I don’t know, but maybe the public will be especially eager to help us solve the murder of a young man from the old country . . . or at any rate what many Minnesotans consider to be the old country.” Vidar Sundstøl 72 And with that the broadcast segment came to an end. Lance regretted having missed the press conference when it was broadcast live on the radio a couple of hours earlier. He drove through Grand Marais, the county seat of Cook County and a small town of approximately , permanent inhabitants , with almost as many vacationers in the summertime. He was thinking about what the female reporter had asked. Was there anything to indicate that someone else besides the two Norwegians had been at the scene of the crime that night? Nobody knew that Andy Hansen from Two Harbors had driven down Baraga Cross Road at about : p.m.— just a few hours before the murder. I wonder how Andy is feeling now, thought Lance. But it was impossible to imagine, since he had no idea what his brother had been doing down by the cross, or why he’d found it necessary to lie about his whereabouts. The question of how he was now feeling depended, of course, on what he’d been up to that particular night. For a moment the worst possible scenario crossed Lance’s mind, and again he pictured that shattered skull. He had exactly the same feeling as he’d had in the hours immediately after discovering the murder—the feeling that something that belonged to him alone was about to be taken away from him. He’d noticed it right after he heard Lecuyer and Nyland talking about the murder on the radio. As if it now belonged to everybody , and yet for a few dizzying minutes it had belonged solely to Lance Hansen. That unreal sight in the birch underbrush. The tufts of hair. The sharp little fragments of bone. The teeth. The buzzing of the flies. I still haven’t started shaking, he thought. Then he thought about Andy again. Why couldn’t he have asked him outright what he was doing near the cross on that night? Tell him that lying was a risky business for someone on the periphery of a homicide investigation. He might be drawn into the very center of it. And once a person ended up there, it was often too late to admit that he had lied. At that point there might be no choice but to continue lying, and in the long run he could end up being convicted of a crime that he hadn’t committed. As his brother, this was what Lance should say to Andy. As his big brother and a police officer. He should do it to protect Andy, but he knew that he wouldn’t. It must be because I’m scared of the truth, he thought. More than anything, I’m afraid of hearing what Andy was really doing over there. THE...