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11 2 on that morning Bill Eggum, the short, fat sheriff of Cook County, Minnesota, had only two months left on active duty. He was sitting in his police car, listening to a Car Talk CD. Standing on the rocks all the way out by the lake were Lance Hansen and Sparky Redmeyer. They were talking. Seven police officers, meaning practically the entire police force of Cook County, had assembled in the parking lot. Most of them were standing around their vehicles, not doing anything useful. The call that had come in that morning sounded desperate and incoherent, indicating that U.S. Forest Service officer Lance Hansen was in serious trouble out at Baraga’s Cross. So they had rushed out with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing full-blast, all the way from Grand Marais and farther south. When they arrived and found Hansen with a man who was wearing nothing more than handcuffs and white running shoes, the sight sparked a certain amount of amusement. But it didn’t last long. The sight of the corpse had prompted two of the officers to throw up. The sheriff had seen his share of shattered skulls in his career, usually in connection with car accidents, but he’d never seen anything like this. While he listened to the two hosts on Car Talk trying to calm a woman who claimed she’d seen a real live snake loose in her car, the sheriff wondered what Hansen and Redmeyer were talking about. Barely two hours had passed since Lance had discovered the body of a murdered man. Was that what Hansen and Redmeyer were discussing as they stood there, off by themselves on the rocks, a bit Vidar Sundstøl 12 blurry-looking in the sharp glare of the lake? I wonder if Hansen has anyone he can talk to when something drastic like this happens? thought Sheriff Eggum. Does he have anyone in his life at all? Or is the past the only thing that concerns him? He looked at Lance again and wondered what it was that drove him in his untiring efforts to preserve the history of Cook County. Eggum had once seen with his own eyes the impressive archives that Lance kept in his house. Officially the archives belonged to the local historical society, but no one considered them anything but Hansen’s own property. The sheriff thought that regardless of his motivation, Lance must have something he himself lacked. Something no one else in the whole area possessed. Sheriff Eggum had no idea what that “something” could be, but he thought it might be what made Lance Hansen such a loner. Then he pushed all those thoughts aside. Lance wasn’t his responsibility , after all. He felt he had things under control now. The crime scene had been cordoned off. Not far from the tent they’d found the canoe belonging to the two Norwegians. The surviving man, who was still in no condition to be questioned, had been transported to the hospital in Duluth. According to the doctor, the other man had died sometime between one and four o’clock in the morning . A team of homicide investigators was already on its way north from St. Paul. Bill Eggum had done his job; now it was just a matter of waiting for the experts. He chuckled as one of the hosts on Car Talk suggested that the caller should sell her car to an animal lover. He was in a good mood, in spite of the grisly murder they had just discovered. Only two months from now his retirement would begin, and then he was thinking of spending as little time as possible with his wife. Not that he wasn’t fond of her; on the contrary, she was a wonderful woman, and he didn’t know what he would do without her. That was why he was worried about Lance, who had no one to talk to about difficult matters like this. Crystal Eggum had always been the only person the sheriff could confide in. He was able to tell her what an awful toll it took on him to see young people who’d been killed in car wrecks. Or his thoughts about all the domestic violence he’d been forced to witness. Crystal was a fabulous woman. Even so, he was looking forward to being alone for days on end in the little cabin...
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