Five men, unhurried, hop down from the back in helmets and full assault gear. The leader, emerging from the passenger side, is no one Sigrid has seen before, and the five other men look task-oriented but neither excited nor grave. Together with the driver, they set about off-loading the raft and gliding it into the lake.
Sigrid leaves them and steps into the cool hall of the police station. A clerk smiles at her so Sigrid makes a face much like a smile in return, which stops the clerk from smiling. Sigrid turns to the left through a closed door and finds Irv talking to a portly white policeman in an official POLICE baseball cap that is too small for his round head. Irv stands in front of the man’s desk. He is speaking quietly but waving his hands dramatically. The officer—Frank Allman, according to the brass shirt pin—is taking Irv’s rant in stride.
“What’s going on?” she asks, not sitting or introducing herself.
The local sheriff stands and extends a hand, which Sigrid shakes. His palm is moist and his face looks innocent and helpless.
“Sigrid Ødegård,” says Irv, “this is Sheriff Frank Allman. Frank . . . Sigrid. She’s the police officer from Oslo I talked to you about.”
“You’re much prettier than your photo,” he says.
“What’s going on?” Sigrid asks.
“The commissioner has called,” Irv says. “Not Howard. The actual commissioner.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” says Frank, sitting again, “that a number of decisions have now been taken over our heads, and events have been set in motion, as they say.”
“There’s a SWAT team outside,” Sigrid says. “With a commando raft.”
Irv melts into the visitor chair across from Frank’s desk.
Sigrid does not like his body language. “Talk to me about the SWAT team,” she insists.
“The commissioner,” Frank says, “heard about the standoff by the biker clubhouse last night. He has gone on television to allay any fears that the African American community might have that the death of Dr. Lydia Jones will be ignored or sidelined. He has made a statement from an institution with marble steps saying that catching the killer of Dr. Jones is now a top priority for his office.”
Sigrid looks at Irv, who is looking down at his boots.
“There is no killer of Dr. Lydia Jones. What little evidence we have suggests suicide.”
“There is now,” says Frank.
“That’s not how evidence works. Or facts. Or truth. Or reality.”
“It is, however, how politics works in this crazy world of ours,” says Frank.
“If you send six men into the woods with guns after Marcus, they will go in with the idea that the job requires six men with guns. And they will act as if they are on a job needing six men with guns. And the chances of them hurting Marcus will be disproportionate—it will be unrelated—to the job they should be doing.”
“I don’t disagree with your analysis, ma’am, but there is a chain of command and I am not at the top of it.”
“So this is now politically driven—is that what I’m to understand?” she asks.
“They were elected,” says Frank Allman.
Sigrid places two hands flat to the desk and leans far forward toward Frank’s ruddy face.
“A month ago I was leading a manhunt that ended violently. This one is not going to end that way. That is my brother out there. Who is not violent and never has been. I need you to look into my eyes and promise me this will end gently and peacefully.”
“Ma’am,” says Frank, leaning backwards to gain some distance. “I cannot promise you that.”
Sigrid stands. “Irv,” she asks quietly. “Do you have anything to say?”
Irv looks helpless for the first time since they’ve met. “No,” he says.
“I see. I’ll be outside,” Sigrid says. “I need a minute to myself.”
“I understand,” Irv replies, though Sigrid knows he understands nothing about what’s coming next.
The SWAT team members are chatting amicably to one another about a movie the SWAT leader saw last night about a man whose only way of communicating was by blinking, and he ended up writing a book that way.
“I’m more of an action-adventure or comedy kind of guy myself,” he says, but his wife had made him see it because she thought they needed to break out of their usual patterns. “Ten-year anniversary coming up,” he says. “I guess she’s feeling a little jumpy about it so I went along. I’ll tell you though . . . it was beautiful. Really was.”
The other five men nod their heads until one of them erupts into sobs and the others laugh.
“You’re such assholes,” he mutters.
They talk while stacking gear behind their van as Sigrid strides purposefully but inconspicuously to Irv’s car, where she had earlier placed her bag with the four terrible bottles of one-hundred-proof vodka. When she bought them, and even when she brought them with her, she did not actually think the circumstances would require her to use them.
As she assembles the Molotov cocktails in the trunk of Irv’s car, she tries to remember the name of that film the guy saw. She had seen it too. Something about a butterfly. He was right; it was beautiful.
She rips a motel towel into four strips and shoves them into the bottles. She soaks the wicks. She feels for the lighter in her pocket.
According to the comprehensive report about her last case, Sheldon Horowitz had bullshitted his way into a room at the finest hotel in town and had fooled a rural cop into thinking he was German. He had stolen a boat in plain sight but without witnesses. He broke into a house on the fjord and spent the night there with the boy, having left nothing behind except a sink full of dishes. After that he jacked a tractor, and later, alone and eighty-two years old, he assaulted a mafia stronghold with an inoperable rifle after demanding their surrender.
Not all of Sheldon’s plans worked out either, but she couldn’t help but admire his moxie.
Leaving the bombs in the Wagoneer, she emerges from the side and yells
