It would be best if Sigrid didn’t come, Marcus thinks as he pushes forward the cylinder release on his Taurus .38 revolver and counts the rounds. She doesn’t need to see this. He knows what it looks like when a story is over and he understands how the parts must fulfill their dramatic promises. Lydia’s parents need her story to end in a way that removes all doubt. The police need a villain. The black community does too. And it’s fine. He deserves it. He did then, and he does now. It is better this way.
Still. It would be better for Sigrid to hear about it all later. Like the first time.
The Sofa
This motel, Sigrid learns, doesn’t even have an ice machine. It crouches in the woods behind a black pool of asphalt that shimmers in the rain, the oil rising to the surface and distorting the inverted letters mounted on the roof—L-E-T-O-M.
Her brief internet search for Saranac Lake back at the police station had made the town look picturesque. This motel was not in those photos.
The window is open and Sigrid sits on the edge of the bed. The colors inside are warm but uninviting. Burnt umber in the bedspread. Yellow from the aged bulbs. A red carpet worn to the white threads at the door. She is the only one staying here tonight aside from the fat man in the office watching a game show.
It had been easier getting here than she’d expected. Irv’s people are helpful and accommodating, but their willingness to drive her out here without his sign-off confirmed her suspicion that they are too officious and overly yielding to authority—whether real or imagined. If it were her team she would start demanding more critical thinking.
The main office at the sheriff’s station has a television mounted to the wall on a swing arm, and Sigrid had been able to see it from her jail cell. The news report from the Target parking lot had been broadcast live. She watched a well-dressed black man carry a colorful umbrella and talk to the crowd of people as Melinda exited the patrol car. A ticker ran across the bottom of the screen telling of the deescalating tensions.
There was no more drama to watch and, she realized, no more reason for her to remain at the police station. The time had come to move on.
Setting out for the Adirondacks alone felt right. Irv could catch up later. Or not. At this point, finding Marcus was more important.
She may not have needed Irv but she did still need a ride. Taking another American bus deliberately was not going to happen. That smell of rotting processed meat and stale cigarettes, the whiff of urine from the platforms, the exhaust fumes, the sweaty feet up on the armrests . . . there had to be another way.
Leaving her jail cell, she found a young deputy out in the main room named Eddie Caldwell. There was something in his face that made Sigrid believe he had never experienced pain.
“Irv wants you to drive me to Saranac Lake,” Sigrid had said. “We have to leave now. You know who I am, right?”
Eddie looked skeptical but also impressionable, so Sigrid leaned into the lie. “I’m Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård. And we’re running a little late. I wouldn’t mind a bit of hustle.”
Eddie grabbed his jacket and told a woman named Alice he’d be back in a few hours, and off they went.
Sigrid’s first motel visit had been shared with two bottles of second-rate blended whiskey and a gigantic bucket of ice. She’d spent her time wiggling her toes and staring at them. This time, Sigrid wants to do better.
Tomorrow she plans to visit Frank Allman, the local sheriff, as soon as the station opens at nine in the morning. It is her assumption that Frank will be there and Irv will not. This should give her time alone to apprise Allman of the situation with Marcus and to see whether he’s inclined toward a thoughtful and considered approach to finding him or—in the vein of Irv’s SERT commander, Pinkerton—he’s preparing to burn the forest to find Marcus. If it’s the latter, Sigrid will have to put her new plan into motion.
This new plan, unlike her failed biker-bar plan, is going to work. All that’s required is a map, Marcus’s GPS coordinates, and—if the situation turns dire—a lot of alcohol. In a few minutes she’ll have everything she needs.
She takes the key and leaves.
The motel is a dump, yes, but its saving grace is its proximity to an all-night liquor store. Outside, along a path worn into the grass by the side of the road, Sigrid draws in the evening smells of warm pavement and fresh rain before entering a surprisingly well-stocked freestanding garage of a liquor store. An electronic bing-bing announces her entrance, but no one inside acknowledges it. She collects a green plastic basket with two stainless handles and swings it from her arm while whistling a new song by Maria Mena.
In Norway there is only one store for alcohol and it can be found in cities all across the country: the Wine Monopoly. It is state-owned and taxed beyond reason, and the cheapest bottle of fermented Austrian sludge costs around seventeen dollars. Here, though. Oh . . . here it is different. Here is where a plan comes together at the right price.
When Sigrid and Marcus were children they would find discarded soda and beer bottles in a creek that ran through the center of the village. They’d soak off the labels, wash them off, and then—in the deepest, darkest, deadest of night, way, way after eight o’clock—they’d balance the colored bottles on upturned flashlights, casting an eerie green aura across the room, turning their cozy home into a flickering cloud of nuclear mist. Into that toxic cloud they’d tell ghost stories until someone—usually Marcus—freaked out.
All those bottles are here. And so are all those blended whiskeys for people who can’t afford or appreciate the single-malts
