P Tracy - Snow Blind

‘You want me to drive right by?’

‘Hell no. We could starve to death before we hit the next place.’

They blinked their way past a cluster of buildings that called itself a town. It had a weird name Gino couldn’t pronounce, and even weirder letters, like o’s with umlauts and slashes through them. A large sign trumpeted some auspicious connection to a sister town in the old country. Gino couldn’t pronounce that one, either.

A little farther down the road Gino eyed a highway sign and read aloud: ‘“Carl Moberg slept here.” Who’s Carl Moberg and why do we care where he slept?’

‘He was a famous Swedish writer.’

‘Yeah, so what did he write?’

‘The Emigrants. It was about the hardships of settling Minnesota.’

‘Oh, yeah. Hey, I think I saw the movie. Isn’t that the one where they get caught in a blizzard and have to cut their horse open and put their kid inside so he doesn’t freeze to death?’

‘I think it was an ox.’

‘Whatever. Christ, I had nightmares for a year after I saw that. Kind of makes you wonder why anybody settled here in the first place.’

‘Brilliant marketing. The governor needed settlers for his brand-new state, so he started giving away free land to anybody who’d take it. He glossed over the Siberian winters and the mosquitoes and focused on the rich cropland and fjordlike surroundings. He sold it as kind of a home away from home, and it worked like a dream in the old country. They came in droves from Scandinavia.’

Gino looked skeptically out at the barren landscape of snowdrifts, frozen lakes, and skeletal trees and thought about the dead horse or ox or whatever it was. ‘They must have been really pissed off when they got here. How the hell do you know all this stuff, anyhow? You sound like an encyclopedia entry.’

‘I paid attention in history class. Why don’t you know this stuff? Isn’t Rolseth a Scandinavian name?’

‘I always thought it was German, but what do I know? Hell, when you think about the history of the Vikings, you gotta figure pretty much everybody has a little Scandinavian blood in them one way or the other.’

‘Good point.’

Bars and gas stations and unidentifiable pole buildings started cropping up along the roadside as they approached another dot on the map. Gino was staring intently out the windshield and made a funny snuffling sound.

‘What?’

Gino gave him a goofy smile and pointed. ‘There’s a teapot in the sky.’

Magozzi looked up through the windshield at a water tower that was, incredibly, shaped like an old-fashioned teapot, covered in rosemaled flowers and emblazoned with the message: VÄLKOMMEN TO AMERICA’S LITTLE SWEDEN. He couldn’t help but smile. ‘By God, there is.’

‘Gotta be the only one like it in the world.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Come on, don’t be such a killjoy. There’s probably some deep meaning behind it.’

‘Or not.’

‘Yeah, or not. But it’s unique, you gotta give it that. And how often do you see flowers on a water tower? Makes you feel better about drinking the water, right? I mean, White Bear has a bear on their water tower and you can’t help but think about the whole bear in the woods thing.’ Gino heard a muted beep and pulled out his cell phone. ‘Well, glory hallelujah. This piece of crap finally picked up a signal.’

‘Weather’s clearing up. Either that, or we’re close to what might be the only tower for miles. Better talk fast.’

Gino nodded and pushed speed dial. ‘Got a pile of messages from the office while this thing was in a coma. Maybe Tinker and McLaren solved the case while we were gone and we can go on vacation. Hey, Tinker, we’re on our way back. What’s the word? What do you mean, turn around? We just left, and let me tell you, this place is like a third-world country. Instead of cell towers, they got teapots in the sky and houses in the middle of lakes… all right, all right, hang on.’ Gino pulled out his notebook and a pen and started scribbling while he listened.

The phone call was taking a long time, and Gino was silent for most of it, which was a good sign, as far as Magozzi was concerned – it probably meant that something had broken on the case in Minneapolis. By the time he pulled into the lot of the Swedish Grill, Gino was in the middle of telling Tinker about the snowman on the lake.

‘… still can’t tell if it’s the same doer. This guy’s chest was blown wide open, so it wasn’t a twenty-two, like Deaton and Myerson, and the victim wasn’t a cop, but he was law enforcement. A parole officer out of Minneapolis, name of Steve Doyle. Tinker? Hey, Tinker. You still there?’ Then Gino went silent again and just listened, his expression grim. ‘We’ll take care of it on this end,’ he said at last. ‘In the meantime, find out where Weinbeck was Friday night, when Deaton and Myerson got hit. I’ll call you back.’ He flipped the phone closed and looked at Magozzi. ‘We’ve got to go back to the sheriff’s office.’

Magozzi raised his brows. ‘You don’t want to eat first?’

‘We don’t have time.’

‘You drive, I’ll talk.’ Gino turned on the roof lights while Magozzi fishtailed out of the parking lot and pushed it as fast as he could on the road back toward Lake Kittering.

‘Steve Doyle’s been missing since yesterday. His last appointment was with an asshole named Kurt Weinbeck, who just checked out of Stillwater for damn near killing his pregnant wife. Weinbeck is a no-show at his halfway house, Doyle’s office is trashed and there’s some blood, and his car is missing from the ramp. The wife’s files and contact info are missing, too, so Tinker figures Weinbeck’s going after his wife, and guess what? She lives up here in Dundas County – someplace called Bitterroot.’

‘So Weinbeck is probably Doyle’s shooter.’

‘He looks good for it.’

‘No way a twenty-two put a hole like that in Doyle’s chest.’

‘Yeah, I know. Which means he probably isn’t our snowman killer. Tinker said the TV was still on in Doyle’s office when they got there. At the time of Weinbeck’s appointment yesterday the channel was doing wall-to-wall coverage of the park fiasco, so he could have seen it, maybe figured he could pin Doyle’s killing on our killer if he just built a snowman around him.’

‘Maybe. Or maybe he switched guns. Maybe he’s good for them all.’

‘Not likely, but wouldn’t that be roses? All tied up in one neat package. I could be home by six eating Angela’s spaghetti.’

‘We’re dreaming.’

‘Tell me about it. Domestics are the only things on Weinbeck’s sheet. Those yellow-bellied bastards don’t usually go around popping cops, but Tinker and McLaren will look at it anyway. Anyhow, back to Weinbeck’s ex-wife – calls herself Julie Albright now – Tinker gets her on the horn to warn her, and she blows him off, says she’s not worried, if you can believe that.’

‘Maybe she’ll change her mind when we tell her her ex killed his parole officer to get to her.’

‘That would change my mind. So the upshot is he wants us to talk to her in person, try to get her into protective custody, either with the locals or with us. This Weinbeck character isn’t messing around.’

‘She might be harboring him. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.’

‘That crossed my mind.’

Iris was sitting in the oversized leather chair in the sheriff’s office – her office, now – stuffing another bite of a peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich in her mouth, feeling strangely guilty for eating at all while there was a BCA team on the lake outside her window, addressing the messy aftermath of the violent death of a human being. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the frozen horror of Steve Doyle’s dead face, and still she ate the damn sandwich. There was something wrong with her.