The Ravens (13 page)

“Otter Heart realized at once what must have happened. Tired from walking so far and from carrying the boy on her back, Sad Water had tried to cross the narrow stream, but she stepped in the water and was transformed into a beaver again. The same thing happened to their son, who now sat next to his mother, both of them beavers. This was what the medicine man had warned. Otter Heart called to his wife to swim over to him. Then he would find another medicine man who could change them back into humans. But his wife replied that the only one who was powerful enough was the evil medicine man who wanted to marry her. But she would rather live her life as a beaver. ‘There was only one thing I asked of you,’ she then said. ‘I asked you to build a bridge for me over every creek and river so that I would never get my feet wet. But you couldn’t do even that simple thing for me. From now on, the little one and I will live in the deep rivers and the shallow creeks.’ And the two beavers slid into the river and disappeared underwater while Otter Heart shouted his despair.”

IT
WAS
LATE
by the time they drove back south. Lance persuaded Chrissy to phone home and say that her dance practice had been delayed because the instructor’s car had refused to start in the cold. He was careful to emphasize that she shouldn’t tell her parents she was with him. He thought Andy was the one who answered the phone. It was impossible to make out his words, but the harsh, annoyed voice was unmistakable.

“Good God, I said I’d be home in an hour.”

Chrissy groaned as she stuck her cell back in her jacket pocket.

“He thinks I’m with some guy,” she sighed.

“Oh?” Lance was genuinely surprised.

“Just because I put on makeup and dress the way I do,” she went on. “But you know what? I’ve only had one boyfriend, and what I miss most is holding someone’s hand.”

“Lots of people miss that,” said Lance.

“You too?”

“Sure.”

“Do you miss Mary?”

“I don’t think this is a topic the two of us need to discuss right now.”

“You mean love?” said Chrissy.

“Uh-huh.”

“Isn’t it the most important topic of all?”

“But you’re my
niece.
”

“So what?”

“My seventeen-year-old niece.”

“Almost eighteen.”

“Regardless, it’s not appropriate,” said Lance.

“You know what I think, Uncle Lance?”

“No. What?”

“I think you’re scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Scared of girls.”

Lance laughed loudly, but he could hear how false it sounded. In the uncomfortable silence that followed, he sensed that Chrissy was sitting there in the dim light with a triumphant little smile on her face. He tried to come up with something that would
put her in her place, but suddenly all he could think of was girls.

Just after they’d passed through Grand Marais, his cell phone rang. Lance felt his anxiety rise like an ice-cold wave as the man on the other end of the line said he was calling from the Lakeview Nursing Home in Duluth.

“Is something wrong?” Lance hurried to ask.

“Nothing serious. Just the fact that your mother set off on a little expedition last night and went missing.”

“What are you saying?”

“Well, we found her after a while. It turned out that she’d gone into a janitor’s closet.”

“What was she doing in there?”

“That’s the question,” said the man.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. But when we found her she was a little confused.”

“And this happened yesterday?”

“Yes. Yesterday evening.”

“So why didn’t you call me before?” said Lance.

“It was an oversight on the part of a staff member. You should have been notified earlier today. I apologize.”

“Okay. I’ll drive down to visit her tomorrow.”

“That would be good. I’ll let her know that you’re coming.”

“But she’s all right now?”

“Oh, yes. It was just a temporary confusion.”

Chrissy didn’t say anything when Lance ended the call. He allowed a few minutes to pass before he spoke again.

“That was Lakeview,” he said. “Apparently Inga decided to hide in a janitor’s closet.”

Chrissy burst out laughing but quickly regained her composure.

“So is everything okay with her now?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“What really happened?”

“A temporary confusion, they said. Probably nothing to worry about.”

AT
THE
TOFTE
RANGER
STATION
everything was the same as always. Up near the ceiling the same bald eagle floated from its invisible strings, the big wolf over by the public entrance still had its tongue hanging out of its mouth, and the receptionist, Mary Berglund, had set the usual paper cup of coffee on the counter in front of Lance.

“Did you go to Haugesund?” was the first thing she wanted to know.

He shook his head.

“My great-grandfather came from there. The one who drowned, you know.”

“He drowned?” said Lance.

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He fell overboard and drowned in Lake Superior during a storm. I’d like to see Haugesund someday.”

“Me too,” said Lance with a sigh.

“When are you coming back to work?”

“I’m not really sure. That’s what I was planning to talk to Zimmermann about.”

“He should be here any minute. He said he just had to make a quick stop at the post office.”

“There he is,” said Lance.

Through the window they saw John Zimmermann park
under the big birch, and shortly after he was standing in front of them.

“Lance Hansen,” he said in surprise.

Lance smiled.

“Rested and ready for work?”

“Well . . .”

“Come into my office and we’ll have a chat, okay?”

SITTING
FOR
THE
FIRST
TIME
IN
AGES
under the big map on the wall of District Ranger Zimmermann’s office, Lance felt a strong urge to pretend that nothing had changed. As far as he could see, his ruse hadn’t been discovered. The only people who knew he hadn’t been in Norway were Willy and Chrissy, and he could probably rely on both of them not to tell. So if he could just manage to put certain items out of his mind, things could go back to the way they were before. For the most part. It wasn’t too late. Maybe not even with regard to Debbie. Suddenly he felt like he had a whole life ahead of him, and all he needed to do was forget. In theory this was entirely possible. His family had spent a century perfecting the art of forgetting—that was proof enough. But Lance had become someone else during the seven months that had passed since he found the body of Georg Lofthus.

“So . . .” Zimmermann fumbled with a stack of papers. “When were you thinking of coming back to work?”

“Not quite yet,” replied Lance.

“But you’ve been out for—”

“I haven’t been out. I’ve been on vacation. Vacation days that I’ve been saving up for years. And I’ll use as many of them as I like.”

Lance wasn’t sure where that self-confident tone of voice had come from.

“Excuse me,” Zimmermann ventured.

“No, excuse
me—
” Lance interrupted him as he stood up. “There are actually a few things that I need to be doing. Even though I’m still on vacation.”

“You could at least tell me when you plan to be back on the job,” said the ranger.

Lance paused to consider.

“When I’m ready,” he replied, and then walked out.

HE’D
LEFT
HIS
CELL
PHONE
IN
THE
CAR.
When he was about to drive out of the parking lot in front of the ranger station, he saw that he’d received a call from Andy’s landline.

He called back, and Tammy answered at once.

“What’s going on?” asked Lance.

“Chrissy has disappeared,” she said, out of breath.

“What do mean ‘disappeared’?”

“When we got up, she was gone. The front door was unlocked. She must have left sometime during the night.”

Lance tried to remember if he’d noticed anything special when he dropped her off at the gas station shortly after ten o’clock last night. But she’d immediately started walking home, and he couldn’t recall seeing anyone else around.

“Did she go out yesterday?” he asked.

“Only to dance practice at school.”

“When did she get home?”

“Ten fifteen, I think.”

“Have you tried calling her cell?”

“Of course, but it’s turned off. And that’s not like Chrissy at all. Oh, I’m so scared!”

“Do you want me to get the police to search for her?” Lance suggested.

“No.”

“She’s probably just gone to see a girlfriend.”

“In the middle of the night? When it’s twenty below?” shouted Tammy desperately.

“Hmm . . .”

“You’ve got to find her for me.”

“I’ll do what I can, but if she doesn’t show up sometime today, we’ll need to search for her.”

“No,” Tammy again protested.

“But you must realize we need to do that,” said Lance.

“Just find her,” she pleaded.

THE
FIRST
THING
he did after taking off his jacket was to try Chrissy’s cell number, but a voice told him that the phone was either turned off or located in an area with no coverage. The latter was unlikely, since that would mean she’d have to be in the woods, far away from people. She’d probably switched off her phone in order not to get any calls. But he thought sooner or later she’d turn it back on to check for text messages.

“Call me if you want to talk. I won’t tell anyone what you say,” he texted and pressed “send.” Then he sat down to wait for her to reply, but only a few minutes later he realized how hopeless that was. And he couldn’t just sit here all day. He had to go to Lakeview to find out how his mother was doing.

Once again he got into the car and headed south, this time driving past the ranger station. As he passed the turnoff to Baraga Cross Road, he thought about Andy’s voice shouting on Chrissy’s cell last night. How angry he’d sounded. And Lance remembered what Chrissy had said afterward: “One day I think he’s going to kill me.” She must have reached a point where she couldn’t stand things anymore. So instead of putting up with more accusations and the constant reprimands, she’d called one of her girlfriends and asked her to pick her up someplace nearby. Then they’d either driven over to the friend’s house or gone to see someone else Chrissy trusted. Considering the world he was driving through, which was glittering white and almost unbearably cold, maybe he should have been more worried about his niece. But he didn’t believe that Chrissy would have wandered off in the cold alone, without any plans. He was fairly certain that she was either in Duluth or Two Harbors. If he wasn’t able to get hold of her sometime during the day, he would have to instigate a police search, after all.

When he reached Two Harbors, he decided to stop and have a talk with Tammy. Maybe she knew more than she’d said on the phone.

Lance rang the bell, and his sister-in-law promptly opened the door.

“Did you find her?” she asked hopefully.

“No, but I don’t think there’s any reason to worry.”

Her face fell.

They went into the living room, and before Lance even sat down, Tammy had lit a cigarette. He could tell by the smell that she’d been sitting here alone, smoking and worrying about her daughter for most of the morning, while Andy, as usual, was chopping down timber somewhere in the Superior National Forest.

“So,” said Lance as he sat down in an easy chair. “You haven’t heard from her either?”

Tammy merely shook her head, her face lined with worry. She looked like someone who had seen very little of the world, and yet had seen more than enough.

“I’m sure she’s staying with a girlfriend,” he said, trying to reassure her.

“I hope you’re right.”

Lance waved away the smoke as discreetly as he could.

“Did anything special happen when she came home last night?” he asked.

Tammy lowered her eyes so fast that he knew he’d struck a chord.

“Yes. There was an incident.”

“They had a fight?”

“She came home a lot later than she was supposed to. Something about the dance teacher having car trouble, or something. Andy went through the roof and grabbed hold of Chrissy.”

“How hard?”

“Hard.”

“Did he hit her?”

“No, but she’s probably got bruises today.”

Tammy buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. Lance didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. Finally he stood up, went around the coffee table, and sat down next to her on the sofa. He put out the cigarette that she’d dropped into the ashtray.

“Tammy,” he said. “You can tell me what’s wrong. Don’t cry.”

He tentatively placed his hand on her bowed back.

“There, there,” he murmured, hesitantly stroking her back.

“Oh, God,” Tammy managed to say between sobs.

Lance didn’t know what else to do, so he kept on patting her
back. She was wearing a thin sweater, and through the material he could clearly see her bra straps.

“There, there,” he said again. Sitting so close to her made his voice husky with desire.

Tammy had started to lean toward him so that she was practically lying in his lap, with her head pressed against his chest. Lance put his arms around her thin torso and pulled her close. He felt something inside her dissolving and softening. Without thinking he ran his hand over her hair, and when she didn’t say anything, he kept on doing that, slowly and calmly as he noticed her breathing change, and he felt an urge to hold her even tighter.

Then she abruptly sat up.

“What a life,” she sniffled and went out to the kitchen. Lance could hear her tear off a paper towel to blow her nose.

It had been years since he’d held someone so close, and he was still feeling dizzy.

“When’s Andy due back?” he asked.

Silence in the kitchen. Then she appeared in the doorway, red-eyed and pale.

“Why?”

“Somebody has to talk to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“About the way he’s been treating Chrissy.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?”

“Someone else, I mean. And I guess I’m the most likely person to do it.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Lance.”

“Is it better just to let things go on like this?”

Tammy closed her swollen eyes and sighed.

THE
FIRST
THING
Lance did when he got to Duluth was go to the Kozy Bar, which had just opened. Not that he had any real hope of finding his niece there so early in the day, but if he stayed for a while, maybe she’d show up.

He ordered a Mesabi Red from the same bartender as last time and then sat down at the same corner table. The only other customer was a woman about Lance’s age who was sitting at the
very end of the bar. She was a platinum blonde, wearing faded jeans. Lance sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t come over and join him, so he avoided looking in her direction.

As soon as he’d taken the first sip, he realized that it was too early in the day, even for Mesabi Red. He pushed the glass away and thought about what had happened with Tammy. Had anything really happened? Other than the fact that she’d started to cry and he’d tried to comfort her? He didn’t even like her. He never had. But when she leaned against him like that . . .

Suddenly it wasn’t too early after all. He took a long swig of beer. Tammy Hansen. Good Lord. Or Tammy Swenson, as she was called before she got married. That skinny, cranky woman. He drank more beer and thought with horror about how wrong things could have gone, there on the sofa. At the same time he wished it had happened. No, no. Not with Tammy!

Just then he heard the sound of a text message arriving. It was from Chrissy. “Everything’s OK. Just needed to get away.” Lance called her at once.

“Hi, Uncle Lance,” she said, sounding guilty.

“Hi. So everything’s all right?”

“Yeah.”

In the background he could hear voices and traffic.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“With a girlfriend in Duluth.”

“But don’t you realize Tammy and Andy are upset?”

“They don’t care about me.”

“Of course they do.”

“When I got home last night, Dad was furious. I’ve got bruises all over. And Mom is too scared to say anything. I don’t want to go back home.”

“You’ve got to, Chrissy. You’re not eighteen yet, and you can’t just run away from home.”

“But Uncle Lance, I don’t dare live in the same house with Dad. Not the way he is now.”

A thought occurred to Lance. As simple and effective as a spear.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I can guarantee that Andy will never lay a hand on you again.”

“And how can you do that?”

“Just trust me.”

“What if he does anyway?”

“He won’t.”

“But what if?”

“Then I’ll help you run away,” said Lance, completely serious.

“But how are you going to—?”

“Leave it to me. Just make sure you’re back home sometime tonight.”

Chrissy paused to think. Lance could tell she was trying to make up her mind. At the same time, he realized there was something about the background noise that didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

“Okay,” she told him then.

“Good.”

“But I’m counting on you.”

“He’s not going to touch you again,” Lance said.

After ending the call, he downed the rest of his beer, nodded to the platinum blonde, and left the Kozy Bar. As he was standing on the sidewalk, it occurred to him what he’d noticed about the background noises as he was talking to his niece. They were not the sounds of Duluth. Lance had grown up in the city, and he knew what it sounded like. What he’d heard on the phone had a faster tempo and was louder than what would be heard here. Chrissy was in a bigger city than Duluth.

ABOUT
HALFWAY
between Duluth and Two Harbors, at a place called Stony Point, Lance turned off the road and headed down toward the lake. There he parked and phoned Tammy, who started to cry with relief when he promised that Chrissy would be home by evening. He was taking a chance, but it was hard to imagine that she’d gone any farther than Minneapolis.

“You’re an angel, Lance,” was the last thing his sister-in-law said.