Chapter 30
“So now he’s officially a killer,” Mike Lunde said with an unhappy shake of the head.
They were sitting in the smaller of the two workshops as Bob sipped at the strong black coffee that Mike told him he needed.
“Yeah,” said Bob. He’d hung his clothes up to dry and was wearing sweatpants and a sweater borrowed from Mike. “One attempted murder, now an actual murder. Victim is a family man who as far as we know never hurt a fly. Gomez can count himself lucky we’re on this side of the state border.”
“Because of the death sentence, you mean?” Mike stood working his scalpel around the eyes of the Labrador retriever up on his workbench.
“Yeah.” Bob leaned back in his chair. He was already beginning to sober up. And not feeling too bad either. “Where do you stand on that? Do you think we should be executing people too?”
Mike paused his cutting and peered up into the air.
“It’s a difficult one. I’m against capital punishment because I believe that as a society we should be taking a lead in the whole civilization project, and that means not taking human life.
And as I read somewhere, the long view suggests that fewer murders are being committed here.
And that applies also to other states that don’t have the death penalty, I think? ”
“True enough. But?”
“Well, that man they executed four or five years back…”
“Donald Moeller.”
“That’s right. He raped and killed a nine-year-old girl, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. She went to the store to buy sugar. They were going to make lemonade. After he raped her, he cut her throat.”
Bob saw that pained expression cross the taxidermist’s face again.
“Sorry, Mike, maybe you have kids yourself.”
“That’s okay. Actually that’s the point. If it had been my child, how would I have felt then about capital punishment?”
“Like Tomás Gomez,” said Bob.
Mike gave him a puzzled look.
“Cody Karlstad, the man who was shot this evening, was a passionate supporter of the right to bear arms. The way the NRA sees it, they’re fighting for a principle of freedom.
In their view, that trumps the knowledge that these weapons take more innocent lives than they save.
In a court of law that would be called being an accessory to murder. ”
“So you believe…”
“Yes, I believe Tomás Gomez has introduced the death penalty and appointed himself judge, jury and executioner.”
Mike nodded but said nothing.
Bob walked over to the coffee maker and poured himself another cup, sat down again and watched in silence as Mike continued working.
Looking at the dog’s eyes he could see that Mike had finally found the pair he had been looking for.
And a thought struck him. That he should quit being a cop and study instead to be a taxidermist. Stuff the things he most wanted to hang on to in his life. The things he’d loved.
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“You ever had woman trouble?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No. Or rather yes. The summer I was twenty-two.”
“So you haven’t had many?”
“I guess I haven’t.”
“So how many?”
“Two.”
“Two?”
“My wife and I started going steady when we were fifteen. When I was twenty-two I fell in love with a Saint Paul girl from Summit Hill. We were both students at MCAD, studying sculpture. I was shy but very definite about it, so I broke up with my future wife before I asked the girl out for a date. She said yes, we became a couple, and I spent the next two months learning the difference between infatuation and love. I think she got it too, so there was no big drama when we broke up. And fortunately the woman who was to be my wife was willing to take me back.”
“So that’s the only woman trouble you’ve had in your life?”
“And only my second woman.”
They laughed.
“You’re the only one your wife’s had, I’m guessing?”
“No,” said Mike. “She had one other. At least that I know of. She was twenty-five, I think. It was a Norwegian writer she met when he visited the Hosmer public library—you know, that little old one in Powderhorn. She fell head over heels for him and says it was because he read to them in Norwegian, that we have this latent yearning toward our own original language.”
“Did she tell you or did you find out?”
“She told me.”
“How did you react?”
“I took Norwegian lessons.”
Bob laughed and Mike raised a hand theatrically and declaimed, “Vodann-st?-dettil-p?-setteren-ida?”
“Meaning?”
“How are things down on the farm today.”
“And it worked?”
“Oh yes. In fact, I believe we owe our firstborn to that line. But I suspect she thought it meant something completely different.”
They both laughed.
“Anyway, you fought for her, Mike.”
Lunde shrugged. “Fought and fought. After a while we realized we’d both been lucky and hit the bull’s-eye first time around. That we were made for each other.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
“Don’t I know it. And you?”
“Me?”
“When a man asks another man if he’s ever had woman trouble it’s usually because he’s having woman trouble himself.”
“What kind of woman trouble are you talking about?”
“Well, I can’t possibly know that,” said Mike as he worked at the hair on the dog’s tail with a comb and scissors. “But maybe it’s related to that loneliness in your eyes. What’s her name?”
Bob lowered his head. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to sober up so quickly after all. “Alice,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Same story as yours. She met someone else.”
“And that left you lonely?”
Bob stood up and walked over to a white hare that looked as if it had frozen in mid-hop.
He gently stroked the fur. “Before I met her, I didn’t know what loneliness was.
Or maybe I just covered it over with other women.
She opened me up like a clam, and I discovered there was another Bob in there, a sensitive, tender guy who could love, cry, ask for help… yeah, all that kind of stuff.”
“All that kind of stuff,” Mike echoed with a slight smile, still intent on his work.
Bob put two fingertips against the hare’s nose.
“But when she left me, I found out she had nullified the effect of my antidote to loneliness. Women. Casual sex. Alcohol. Work. I try, and for a short while it’s okay, but I know it can’t last. I’m like that open clam, the sphincter is gone.
I stand there gaping, defenseless, and all the time I’m drying out inside and smelling worse as each day goes by. ”
Bob was almost surprised to feel that the hare’s nose was neither cold nor damp, so likelife was the illusion.
Around its round pupils the eyes were brown, shading to black at the edges.
But Bob was looking at the area closest to the pupil, where the brown shading was lighter, like amber. Like Frankie’s eyes.
“The only consolation is that after a while you get numb to it,” said Bob. “You stop caring, self-respect doesn’t seem all that fucking important. Nor does the respect of others either. In fact, nothing does. Nothing seems to matter.”
“Apart from work?”
“Not even that.”
“But the way it looks, you work night and day.”
“That’s just because I want to be the one who brings Tomás Gomez down, not Olav Hanson or one of those other idiots.”
“Is that why you haven’t told any of them about a taxidermist where Tomás Gomez has an order waiting to be picked up?
” Mike Lunde didn’t look up from his work, but he had that slight smile on his face.
It reminded Bob of the way his father looked after he had had that stroke.
“To be honest I’ve been wondering why you’re the only police officer I’ve spoken to. ”
“Well,” sighed Bob, “now you know.”
“Thank you for being honest, Bob. Are you going to be honest about that other thing too?”
“Other thing?”
“The reason you and Alice broke up.”
“But I already told you. She met someone else.”
“Before that. The reason the two of you fell apart.”
“And what might that be?”
“I don’t know. It could be the real reason you’re so lonely. But of course, we don’t need to talk about it.”
Bob stood there and swallowed. Looked at the eyes on that hare.
No, they didn’t need to talk about it. It had worked just fine so far, hadn’t it?
Not talking about it? Just let the wound heal over and knock back a stiff drink when the pain gets too much or the thoughts can’t be driven off.
Her eyes were brown. Like caramel, said Alice. He preferred amber.
“We lost our daughter,” said Bob. “Frankie. She was three years old.”
Lunde stopped working. Briefly wiped his hands together and let his arms drop to his sides.
The look he gave Bob was open, naked, direct.
What Bob saw wasn’t a look that asked for something, some further explanation.
And Mike Lunde didn’t say anything either, it was as though he was someone who understood that no words added to those just spoken could give them meaning. Daughter. Lost. Three years old.
“She found my service pistol in our bedroom drawer,” said Bob. “She was playing with it. Alice was home and heard the shot. An hour later our daughter died at the hospital.”
Bob chose his words the same way he always did whenever the situation demanded that he explain what had happened.
It was a formula he had learned by heart.
After a while he could recite it without too much alteration.
Sometimes, like when he gave his statement to the police, he would add details, volunteer facts.
Such as that he had kept the pistol and ammunition easily accessible in the drawer of the bedside table because there had recently been two nighttime burglaries in the area.
But never a word about what it felt like or about Frankie herself.
That would be like opening the floodgates.
He knew he would lose it. And still, as he stood there reciting the formulaic sentences, he could feel the pressure.
“I’m so terribly sorry to hear that, Bob,” said Mike.