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181 19 smells of fried fish and fresh popcorn were coming from the vendors’ booths that had been temporarily set up along the harbor boardwalk in Grand Marais. The white paper sacks that people were carrying were stained with melted butter from the popcorn. Seagulls shrieked as they flew over the harbor, on the lookout for something to eat. Eirik Nyland was sitting at a picnic table in front of the Trading Post. The shop sold sports equipment and vacation gear, Scandinavian sweaters and cardigans, Indian dream catchers, Norwegian trolls, wild rice from the lakes around the Iron Range, as well as books about traditional Indian foods, fishing lures, Swedish pioneers , and shipwrecks at the bottom of Lake Superior. Nyland had already handed over a few dollars in the shop. In a bag that he’d set next to the table was a little model canoe made of smooth, dark wood. It was a beautiful example of Ojibwe craftsmanship. But now he was sitting at this picnic table with Bob Lecuyer, Jason Fries, and Sparky Redmeyer. They’d been here for an hour. On the table stood two thermoses. One was already empty, while the other still held a few dregs of coffee. Nyland had spent most of the morning on the phone with various people in Norway. He’d talked to three former teachers of Georg Lofthus and Bjørn Hauglie. All three had given the young men the best possible references. Nyland hadn’t really expected to hear anything else. Of course teachers would have liked students such as Lofthus and Hauglie. There was never any trouble with Christian Vidar Sundstøl 182 boys who were the outdoors type. When he asked—without speci fically mentioning homosexuality—whether the two might have had a very close relationship, he noted that the teachers had no idea what he was hinting at. For them, the possibility that the boys might have been lovers was apparently as likely as Georg being killed by a Martian. From a police sergeant in the Norwegians’ hometown, Nyland had also managed to obtain a brief statement from nineteen -year-old Linda Nørstevik, who was supposed to have married Lofthus in September. The sergeant had thought it better if he spoke to her instead of Nyland, since she was “in a state of shock and grief,” as he put it. So Nyland had asked him to find out what Linda thought of Bjørn Hauglie. According to the sergeant, she had only good things to say about him. Bjørn and Georg were like brothers . That was how she’d described them. When Nyland asked the police sergeant whether he knew if Hauglie and Lofthus were gay, there was a long silence on the phone. Followed by indignation. The sergeant had known Georg Lofthus personally. He was also good friends with his father. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d even known Georg’s grandfather, when he was still alive. “There has to be a limit ,” said the sergeant. He said the words quietly, but his voice was smoldering with anger. Quite an emotional person, thought Nyland. He ended up feeling annoyed after talking to all those people, and some of his irritation was still lingering as he sat outside the Trading Post. That surprised him a bit, because he didn’t usually react this way. Yet he felt a similar vexation when he thought about Georg Lofthus’s Bible. Or rather, when he thought about the Bible quote that the grandparents had chosen for the inscription in their gift to the newly confirmed grandson. Nyland knew the quote by heart: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” It made him both annoyed and a little sad. By now it was almost eight o’clock in the evening. Since they’d worked all day, they hadn’t had time to watch the parade. Sparky Redmeyer was the one who claimed the Fourth of July celebration in Grand Marais was something they all simply had to experience. So far they’d mostly just walked around looking at the people eating popcorn and fried fish. For the past hour they’d sat at this table in front of the Trading Post as they drank coffee and tried to find something to talk about that wasn’t related to the case they were [18.119.139.50] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...
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