The Ravens (2 page)

AFTER
DRIVING
FOR
A
GOOD
HOUR
Lance stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank and buy a couple of hot dogs, a soda, and a cup of coffee. He paid with some of the foreign coins that he was slowly getting used to. Then he gulped down the coffee so greedily and quickly that the young guy behind the counter couldn’t help staring.

He felt better after eating the food and finishing his coffee. Then he continued southward through a landscape that didn’t change significantly. As he headed into the morning hours and away from the night, the traffic increased. When he encountered a semi on the road, the drifting snow was like a huge cloud of powder.

For two months he’d been living the same aimless life, like a prisoner. If he awoke in the evening, he would often just lie in bed until he dozed off again. Sometimes he would get up and go to the bar just down the street, but he never ate out, since he felt like everyone was staring at him, even though he looked no different from the local populace. For the most part he’d spent the past two months in bed in his hotel room. Fortunately they had American TV programs. Usually he ate in bed too. But mostly, he’d slept, always without dreaming.

THE
CAR
RADIO
had stopped working. The only sound it made was a crackling, hissing noise that made him think of the desolate
space and cold outside. He’d been driving for over three hours, but the landscape was still the same: snow-covered forests in between empty white expanses of varying size, concealing a tarn, a marsh, or a lake. He drove across narrow bridges with rivers or creeks underneath, but he never saw even a drop of water; the current flowed at least six feet under the snow and ice.

As he pulled out of a tight curve, he saw a wolf standing in the middle of the road. He stomped on the brakes and managed to stop twenty or thirty yards away. The wolf was wearing its best winter pelt, with a hint of frosty white in the gray. In the wolf’s world, it was clearly the car that had to yield the right-of-way. The animal held its position with its head lowered in a threatening pose. In the background lay the carcass of a stag on which the wolf had been feeding. Lance let the car roll forward slowly until there were only a few yards between him and the wolf, but the animal didn’t move, and he was again forced to stop. Then it bared its teeth, hackles raised. Yet Lance noticed that the wolf also seemed afraid, its body tensed as if ready to run off at any moment.

To put an end to the standoff, Lance honked the car horn. The wolf spun around and ran, but after only a few yards it stopped and stood still, facing the car. Lance honked again, but this time the wolf merely backed up a few paces, its ears lying flat. Even though he was sitting inside the protection of the car, Lance felt scared. The wolf couldn’t hurt him, but there was something ominous about the completely irrational display of defiance and strength. The wolf possessed something to which no human being had access, and it seemed to consist solely of this incomprehensible otherness as it stood there, refusing to flee.

Another car appeared, coming from the opposite direction, and both Lance and the other driver honked. Only then did the wolf retreat. Awkwardly it backed up along the snowbank and then disappeared into the woods.

RIGHT
AFTER
THAT
he drove through a small community and saw a bunch of kids, probably waiting for the school bus, standing in a shelter with their shoulders hunched and their faces buried
in thick scarves. He imagined himself and his brother, Andy, on their way to school in the bitter cold, walking along as they’d done so many times in the past. Duluth in the 1970s, the town on the steep hillside with a view of the lake, the ships loaded with taconite, the old Aerial Lift Bridge—all those things that he saw and yet didn’t see because they were there every day and always had been. What had they talked about on those mornings? He remembered only the heavy winter clothes, Andy’s book bag that swung from side to side as he ran, the frosty vapor whenever he spoke.

Without his noticing, the highway had changed into a street, and he recognized the place from the time he’d driven in the opposite direction a couple of months earlier. He came to a traffic light and stopped to wait for it to turn green. At the end of the cross street, off to the right, he could see the smoke from the big paper factory on the American side of the river. As he approached the bridge over Rainy River, the line of cars got longer, until it almost came to a standstill. Otherwise the streets seemed deserted in the small town straddling the river. On the opposite shore the first low rays of sunshine broke through the smoke coming from the American factory, coloring that side of the river pink.

Thinking about the wolf, Lance drove across the bridge. This was the same border he’d crossed two months ago; it was even the same route he’d taken. But the border he’d crossed inside himself was different this time. When he’d left the States it was with the certainty that one day he would return. But there was no turning back from where he was now heading.

ELY
IS
LOCATED
on the shores of wind-swept Shagawa Lake, within the Iron Range of Minnesota, and Lance decided that would be a suitable place to begin. He checked in at the Lakeland Motel and ate a slice of pizza at the local Pizza Hut. Afterward he bought some bread and lunchmeat and a pair of snowshoes at a store close to the motel. He flung the snowshoes in the trunk of the car with a feeling that they might come in handy.

The room was virtually identical to the one in which he’d just spent two months in Kenora, Canada. The bed was no better or worse than the other, but there was one big difference: it was in the United States.

Eirik Nyland was the person who had made the whole disappearing act possible. Lance had chosen some Norwegian postcards from his personal collection and written messages to friends and family, as if he were vacationing in Norway. Then he’d sent the cards to Nyland with instructions about when each one was to be mailed. As far as the Norwegian police detective knew, Lance was shacking up for a month with some woman he’d just met, and he didn’t want his colleagues or family to start poking around and asking questions.

When he woke up, it was midnight. He went over to the window to look out. Even the old, faded shopping center looked beautiful in the light from the moon. Not a sound could be heard; the buildings and parked cars cast long blue shadows.

LANCE
KNEW
EVERY
MILE
of the road between Ely and the lake, and yet the landscape seemed transformed in the moonlight. There were bridges he didn’t recognize, and big open expanses in the midst of the forested terrain. He wasn’t sure whether they concealed water or marshes. At lengthy intervals a building or two would appear, but even those he was unable to place.

He’d started to wonder if he might have taken a wrong turn, when he suddenly found himself in the town of Finland. It was impossible to mistake the twenty-foot-high wooden sculpture of St. Urho, the Finnish American patron saint, as it stood there looking like some sort of totem pole.

Finland was wrapped in ice-cold slumber, not a single person was outside, and no movement was visible behind the curtains in the few houses where the lights were still on.

As he passed the town’s only shop, the Finland General Store, where you could buy everything from sewing accessories to bread and milk to snow blowers, he realized why he’d driven to this particular place. Debbie Ahonen. They’d dated for a short time when Lance was twenty-five, but Debbie fell in love with another policeman and moved to California. He’d hardly recognized her last summer, more than twenty years later, when he’d unexpectedly discovered her sitting behind the counter ringing up his purchases. Only when she spoke did he realize who she was, although her voice, like everything else, was duller than he remembered. That voice of hers. In the past it had nearly driven him crazy. How many lonely nights had he lain awake, trying to conjure up the sound in his memory? But when he heard it again last summer, he’d noticed instantly that something was missing. He couldn’t put it into words. A certain sweetness? Or was it simply her lost youth? In any case, it had no doubt disappeared from his own voice as well. If his voice had ever contained any hint of youthfulness, that is. Regardless, he had recognized Debbie the second she spoke to him. Her laughter, which men in the past would have killed to hear, was now merely a prologue to a smoker’s cough of the very worst kind. He could hear the mucus laboriously making its way up her respiratory passages to land in her mouth, followed by the sound of her swallowing it again.

And yet she was still Debbie Ahonen.

Richie Akkola, who owned both the gas station and the grocery store, had to be close to seventy, and he’d been a widower for years. Now Debbie was living with him in an apartment above the station. What was it she’d said? Something about Richie taking care of her old mother. And it was because of her mother, who couldn’t manage on her own anymore, that Debbie had moved back here. But now Richie Akkola was caring for her, and in return Debbie was living with him. Was that the arrangement?
In return?

Lance stopped the car outside the gas station and sat there, staring at the windows on the second floor. It was dark up there, and the curtains were drawn. That’s where Debbie is right now, thought Lance. He almost couldn’t believe it was true. Like a sleepwalker, and without knowing why, he reached out to turn on the radio, which had been on the blink for nearly a week. Suddenly the car was filled with voices and laughter. His heart skipped a beat and a sharp taste, as if from metal or blood, filled his mouth. A light went on behind one of the windows above the gas station. Lance quickly put the car in gear and drove off.

The radio program he’d tuned in to was a repeat of the most recent
Car Talk.
The two hosts, who were brothers, had a man from Boulder, Colorado, on the line. “So your windshield wipers keep going on and off at random?” said one of the hosts in surprise. “Yeah. They act like they’ve got a will of their own,” said the caller. “I have the same problem with my wife,” replied the other brother.

HE
PASSED
the Whispering Pines Motel where Georg Lofthus and his friend had spent the last night before Lofthus was killed. No, not his friend, Lance corrected himself, his
lover.
Georg Lofthus and Bjørn Hauglie had been lovers who’d kept their relationship secret, since the Christian community to which they belonged was extremely judgmental. Even sitting alone in his car in the middle of the night, Lance had a hard time thinking about what was discovered during the autopsy of Lofthus’s body. Hauglie’s semen was found in his stomach. When Lance heard about that, he’d felt as if the last puzzle piece had fallen into place, and it was
a puzzle showing him the all-too-familiar face of the man who had murdered Lofthus. Only a day after the murder, Lance had begun to suspect his brother. But why would Andy have killed the Norwegian canoeist?

When Lance found out that the Norwegians were gay, he instantly thought about the episode from high school involving a boy named Clayton Miller. Everybody knew that Clayton was gay, even though no one had ever heard him say so or seen any obvious indications of his sexual preference. It was just something they all knew. Even though Lance had spoken to the boy only once, he had a very clear memory of how Clayton looked. A lock of his raven-black hair, which was cropped close in the back, hung over one eye. He wore long, multicolored scarves that he had supposedly knitted himself. Lance shook his head at the thought. A boy who knitted!

Clayton Miller was like no one else at their school. He stood out. And that must be why Lance remembered his appearance so clearly more than thirty years later. And because of the one instance when he’d spoken to the boy. That was on a Saturday, when the schoolyard was deserted, and Clayton was lying on the ground with a punctured lung. Lance had been frantically summoned by one of Andy’s friends. As he was walking across the schoolyard toward Clayton, he saw his brother suddenly come around the corner of the gym, holding a baseball bat in his hands. In Andy’s eyes Lance saw the look of a person who was so alone that he didn’t know what in the world to do with himself. It was a look that he’d never seen before. Lance hadn’t hesitated. He went over to Andy and grabbed hold of the bat, saying, “Let go.” He was not afraid of his younger brother. Not back then.

Andy had instantly released the bat and after stammering a few incomprehensible words, he fled the schoolyard. When Lance asked Clayton Miller how he was doing, the boy replied that he thought his lung was punctured. Lance remembered so clearly how the boy who was lying on the asphalt had carefully whispered his reply, as if scared that he might rip himself open if he spoke too loud. “Are you his brother?” Clayton whispered. And when Lance nodded, he said, “He tried to kill me.” Those were the only words Lance had ever exchanged with Clayton Miller.

IT
WAS
3:05
IN
THE
MORNING
when Lance drove into Two Harbors. The light from the moon, which was now low in the west, made the signs in front of the Dairy Queen cast long shadows across the sidewalk. In the frozen landscape the ads for Blizzards and milkshakes seemed totally absurd.

Lance parked near the Lutheran church, then walked back to the Dairy Queen and headed down the road behind the building. The snow creaked under his boots, but otherwise it was utterly quiet in Two Harbors. Not even a police patrol car anywhere in sight. He walked slowly, as if trying to postpone what was coming. Finally he stood still and stared at the green, two-story house with the two cars out front: a brand-new Ford Freestar and an old white Chevy Blazer with a red door on the right-hand side. The house was a good fifty yards away, so there was still time to turn around.

He continued the rest of the way over to the cars and crouched down behind the Chevy. He listened hard, but not a sound came from the house, and only the outdoor light was on. After staying there like that for several minutes, he stood up and went over to the house to try peering through the living room window. But it was darker inside than out, and through a gap in the curtains he could make out only a TV, identifiable because of its red electronic light. He crept over to the kitchen window and looked inside. Here the moonlight was shining through another window so he could see the counter and table. The counter was covered with bottles, boxes, and a number of other things he didn’t recognize. On the table he saw a coffee mug, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. Even though all the clutter and the cigarettes would not have been found in his own home, the sight of those items still stirred up emotions for him. Probably because this was the first home he’d seen in more than two months, his first glimpse of someone’s private life.

A door opened. Fear raced through him like a paralyzing fluid. He hardly dared breathe as he waited for Andy’s voice, but nothing happened. Had he just imagined the sound? No, he was sure he’d heard it. Feeling weak and sick with terror, he managed to move back to the cars and crouch down behind the Chevy again. From that position he saw a light go on in the bathroom.
After a few minutes it was turned off, but he didn’t dare go back to the house. He couldn’t keep moving about like this. Somebody was bound to see him, but there was something about the sight of a home that got to him, even if it wasn’t the nicest. He was afraid of getting caught, but he felt such a longing to go inside. Or maybe not inside that particular house. Some other house where people were living out their lives.

The side window of the Chevy was coated with a layer of ice. Lance took off his right glove and scraped at the ice with his fingernail. He had an urge to leave something behind, something that would connect him to them. But what should it be? He couldn’t simply write his initials.

In the end he scratched a tiny figure of a man in the ice.