They cross into an enormous field that Melinda calls a “quad” though Sigrid can’t see how it is a fourth of anything. It is a lovely and inviting manicured lawn, the center of which boasts a flaccid American flag atop a massive white flagpole.
“It’s worth the visit,” Sigrid says. “What did you ask the last time you came?”
“We were here because of Dr. Jones,” Melinda explains. “The sheriff wanted us to look past the eyewitness and see what else might come up. He said your brother was the obvious suspect but our job was to understand the relationship between him and the victim.”
“So you were focused on establishing a motive for Marcus?”
“Well,” Melinda says, without conviction, “I’m not sure it was that specific. All he said on the way over was that when you see a picture of a running man you can’t know from looking at it whether he’s running toward something or away from something or just going for a jog.”
“What did you learn about Marcus?” Sigrid asks.
“That he loved Lydia and he loved working here.”
“That doesn’t sound like a motive for murder,” Sigrid says.
“Not right off the bat, no, but the sheriff says that whenever there’s love there’s a universe of possibility.”
“He’s quite the philosopher, your sheriff.”
“He used to be a Bible scholar or something back before he became sheriff. Smart, smart guy.”
When Sigrid signed up for an MA in criminology a lifetime ago, she lived in an apartment in Bislett, in Oslo, with three other friends who split the rent. Most of her classmates were from Oslo and so lived at home with their parents. The University of Oslo is a city university with no campus to speak of, at least from an American point of view. There are clusters of buildings off Ring 2, but the students don’t make it their home in the way they do in American dorms. This place—Sigrid thinks to herself, strolling through the picturesque campus—is a universe unto itself. She can see why Marcus would be seduced by it.
She imagines the conversation she would have with him:
You have found a place to hide after all, she would have said to Marcus if he’d been here right now.
“With girls and sunshine,” he’d reply.
“And they pay you for this?”
“Barely. It’s below minimum wage if you run the numbers.”
“Why do you do it?” she’d want to know.
“Look around, Sigrid,” he would have said. “The students are hungry. The hunger is everywhere. For knowledge, for companionship, sex, solutions. They even want the complications. They want it all. Everything they haven’t experienced or thought yet. They want it to flood in. And yet for all that hunger and need, they are exactly where they want to be, doing what they want to be doing. They are hungry and satisfied at the same time. It’s an unnatural state of being that is somehow perfectly stable. That sense of impossible balance is what defines the place. Like them, I’d pay to be here if I had to.”
“You’re being exploited.”
“I know. And yet, look at this late summer day and tell me where else one is supposed to be on this earth?”
She and Melinda finally arrive at a building that reminds her of the zoological museum in Oslo in the botanical gardens. It houses the Department of Earth Sciences, which includes agriculture and environmental studies—according to a large directory inside the main hall.
Their footsteps echo as they walk up the stairs.
“His department head is Dr. Ernie Williamson,” Melinda says.
“You met him?”
“Yeah.”
“Do people know that you suspect Marcus as having played a role in Lydia’s death?” Sigrid asks.
“You mean that we think he murdered her?”
“Yes, that’s my question.”
“Oh, no. That’s not public. They only know he’s missing.”
“How would you describe Dr. Williamson?” Sigrid asks.
“If I used the phrase, ‘straight out of central casting,’ would you know what that means?”
“No,” Sigrid says.
“I won’t use it then.”
Dr. Ernie Williamson is in his late fifties. He’s a white man with straggly hair and glasses that do not fit correctly on his face; their bridge sits too high across his large nose, producing a gap. It is not the sort of eyewear selection a man would make if he’d been accompanied by someone else.
Sigrid looks to his wedding finger—remembering that the Americans wear it on the left hand, not the Norwegian right. He doesn’t have one, and there is no tan line. His desk, like his glasses, allows for a gap—this one between the skirt of the desk and the floor. Poking out from the slot are black shoes designed for comfort, which signal a loss of interest in human sexuality.
He waves Sigrid and Melinda into his office with informality and sincerity.
“Come on in. Come on in. You’re . . . Officer . . . don’t tell me.”
“Melinda, sir.”
“Melinda. Nice to see you again. I heard your footsteps in the hall and my first thought was . . . zombies. I mean, who else would be roaming these halls on a day like today? It’s so beautiful out there. So beautiful, there’s nowhere to go but down.”
“Just us local police, sir,” Melinda confirms. “No zombies. None we noticed, anyway.”
“Well, come on in. What can I do for you? How are things going with Lydia’s case? We’re all very shook up about it around here.”
Sigrid watches Melinda move, without hesitation, to the farthest of two chairs across from the professor’s desk, suggesting that she sat there last time. People tend to fall into patterns of that type quite naturally. Melinda sits down while introducing Sigrid: “This is Marcus’s sister, Sigrid. She’s from Norway. When I was here last time we talked about Marcus and Lydia and their
