It isn’t Lydia Jones’s contorted and bloodied body on the sidewalk that surprises her. It is that Dr. Lydia Jones was black.
“She was black,” says Sigrid.
“You didn’t know that?”
“No. I hadn’t had time to look her up or . . .” Sigrid stops short of saying “finish reading Marcus’s letters and look through his hard drive,” because it wasn’t necessary for Sheriff Irv Wylie to know about the letters. Or the hard drive.
“Or . . . what?” asks Irv.
“Hmm?”
“You said, ‘or’ and I said, ‘or what’? You were about to add something.”
“Brush my teeth,” Sigrid says.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a Norwegian expression. Hard to translate.”
Irv looks doubtful. “What’s your plan, Sigrid?” he asks.
“I’m working on it.”
Sigrid watches Irv stand up and walk into the main room, where he calls to someone named Melinda and asks her to join them in the holding cells. When he steps back inside he speaks quickly:
“There’s a Motel Six down the road,” he says. “Sixty-three ninety-nine a night plus taxes. Puts you at seventy bucks a night or so with taxes. But there’s no kitchenette, so you’re looking at twenty dollars a day in fast food and another couple for coffee and oddities. Add in the public transportation and a few cabs and you’re looking at at least a hundred and ten a day to stick around here, assuming you never go to the movies or have a drink. Now, I don’t know what they pay cops in Oslo, but if I can guess, that’s a painful bite if you’re here for a few weeks. It would be for me. And you already said your family’s in farming, and probably not the Big Agro type. So here’s what I think.”
Melinda arrives and loiters by the door to the jail. She is a white twenty-something cop in uniform wearing a Beretta nine-millimeter in a black holster. She moves with it comfortably. That would put her in the job for at least a few years.
“Melinda, this here is Sigrid Odegard.”
“Ødegård,” Sigrid says, correcting his pronunciation.
“What she said. She is the sister of Marcus . . . of the same family name. She’s come here from Norway looking for him. She’s gonna stay with you for a while so we can lend her a helping hand in that noble effort.”
“OK.”
“Why would you do that?” Sigrid asks.
“Because the sheriff asked me to.”
“Not you. You.”
“So we know where you are and can more easily follow you around.”
“Right. But I don’t know where he is.”
“I believe you completely,” says Irv. “And I think your intentions are just and true. But I also suspect that you are going to track him down like one of those little sniffer dogs. You know the little sniffer dogs?”
“Yes.”
“Like one of them. Maybe a beagle. Or a schnauzer.”
“I can’t imagine why you think I’m going to be more successful. You just delivered a speech about how I can’t possibly find him by myself in a strange land.”
“Not against us, no. But with us? Absolutely. And here’s why: We always have to leave the possibility for individuation during investigations. To us he’s an amalgam. A profile. A typification. But not a person. You, however, know him. You know what makes him . . . distinct. That means you have the edge on knowing how his personality might manifest as behavior. Also, I think you see the world differently than I do, Ms. Sigrid. I believe we, at the sheriff’s station, are seeing your brother’s world through a glass darkly, which is why we can’t find him. But through your clear blue Norwegian eyes we’re going to learn to see him face to face, and you know why? Because love never fails. And I believe you love your brother. So: Corinthians Thirteen. Who knew it was actually a foundation for a solid investigative strategy in a murder case.”
The General Opinion
Officer Melinda Powell is from Buffalo, New York, where she grew up with her mother, Lisa, and her father, Albert, in a white house with black shutters that was close enough to school so she could walk there, which was really nice because some of her friends had to take the bus every morning and the kids on the bus could be sort of mean, especially this wild kid named Benny whose parents got divorced when he was really young and no one ever seemed to talk him through it so he was crazy angry at everyone, and that made walking much better because in the winter she got to see all the snowmen people put up in their yard, with the coal and the carrots and the whole deal, and obviously no one pulled her hair or started her day off in a bad mood, which can mean a lot when you’re a teenager especially, and it all made growing up really nice even though it was sort of near the city and it had crime and stuff but not too much in her area, so really, she’s not exactly sure why she became a cop but she did and she just loves it because it feels like she can make a difference, and Sheriff Irv is just the greatest and he’s such an original thinker and straight shooter she knows she can learn a lot from him.
Sigrid learns all this between the time she leaves the police station and the time she enters the passenger-side door of Melinda’s prowler. She wonders how much more she might have learned from Melinda if she’d actually asked a question.
Melinda eventually asks Sigrid where she wants to go first and Sigrid—in an effort to blend in by bonding—says, “I think we should try Marcus’s secret hideout. Have you looked there yet?”
Maybe the delivery was too dry, because Melinda says, “No. That’s a great idea! Do you know the address?”
Sigrid has read someplace that culture is all about language. It seemed reasonable when she read it. Now that she is speaking English she should have been transformed into an American of sorts. But clearly that is not happening and she isn’t
