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228 24 eirik nyland was sitting on the flat rocks near Baraga’s Cross, on a cream-colored blanket he’d brought with him from the hotel. Next to him was a red ice chest he’d just bought. Inside were a Viking ship, a bottle of Gammel Opland, and four bottles of Mesabi Red. It’s just so typical, he thought. When the breakthrough finally came, it turned out that the perpetrator was someone they’d already had contact with, but had decided was not of particular interest. Bjørn Hauglie had been of far greater interest the whole time. And the two men had actually been interviewed on the same day. While Bob Lecuyer and Nyland were in Duluth to talk to Hauglie for the first time, Jason Fries had gone up to Grand Portage to have a talk with a twenty-five-year-old named Lenny Diver. An anonymous man had called the police, claiming that it was Diver who had killed the Norwegian at Baraga’s Cross. Diver had twice been indicted for possession of meth. He’d also served time for drunk driving. He was what the Norwegian press loved to call “an individual known to the police.” Fries had called him a “typical small-time crook.” But he seemed to have a solid alibi. So they had put him on the back burner and focused on Hauglie instead. Then, two days ago, the results finally arrived from the lab in Chicago where the crime scene evidence had been sent for analysis. After that, everything happened very fast. Among the material sent to the lab was a tiny sample of blood that couldn’t have belonged to the victim. Nor to Bjørn Hauglie, for that matter. Because it was determined that the blood had to have come from a man with Indian THE LAND OF DREAMS 229 origins. A specific gene mutation was present that was found almost exclusively among Native Americans. It was true that the police did not have a DNA profile, nor was it possible to determine the percentage of Indian blood in the individual’s genetic makeup. So it was possible the person in question was not a full-blooded Indian. This discovery might not have brought them any closer to finding the killer, except that they’d already interviewed someone in Grand Portage as the result of the anonymous tip. On that same day Lenny Diver was arrested at his home. This happened after Lecuyer and Nyland paid a visit to one of the two men who had provided Diver with an alibi. The police were unable to get hold of the other one. Diver had told Fries he’d been playing cards and drinking with these two buddies all night long when the murder was committed. And both men had confirmed his account. They said Lenny hadn’t been outside the house all night, so it would have been impossible for him to go out to Baraga’s Cross and bash in the skull of some tourist. But when Lecuyer and Nyland went to see Mist, as the second friend was called, and brought it to his attention that he was about to be drawn into a homicide case, he quickly admitted he hadn’t even seen Diver on the night in question. Nor had he been playing cards and drinking. Well, he did have a few drinks, but at home, and alone. Diver didn’t call Mist until the following day. If the police happened to contact him, Mist was supposed to say he and Diver had been drinking and playing cards together all night. “You know how they always come down on me whenever anything happens,” he’d told Mist. And Mist knew that was true. Lenny was the kind of guy who always ended up in the police spotlight, even if he’d done nothing wrong. And this time the only thing he’d done was to pick up some random chick and go back to her hotel room after some heavy drinking in a bar in Grand Marais. That was why he’d made up this story to tell his girlfriend—that he’d been in Grand Portage drinking and playing cards with two buddies all night long. Although the truth was that he’d been with another woman. But then he’d heard about the murder on the news. And he realized that if the cops came around, asking Lenny...
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