ELEVEN

“When will I ever learn,” Sheriff Palmer Knutson mumbled as he poured his second cup of French Roast coffee.

“What time was it when you finally came to bed?” asked Ellie, his wife of thirty-six years.

“A quarter to one.”

“So was it worth it?”

Palmer gave her a rueful look and asked: “Is it ever? I’ve seen Bride of Frankenstein at least half a dozen times, but after the game I was too depressed to get up and go to bed. So I just started channel-surfing to see what was on. You know, the best thing about that movie is that it reminds me of the Mel Brooks version, Young Frankenstein.

“So the Woofies depressed you again, did they?”

“Yah, only this time it took them the whole night to do it. The game was on the West Coast, you know—the Portland Trailblazers—so it didn’t start until nine thirty. Actually, you know, the Timberwolves played pretty well for most of the game. They led by five points with only twenty-seven seconds to go. Well, naturally they managed to let the Blazers tie it up and send it into overtime. A five-minute overtime! Five minutes and they ended up losing by eighteen points. How can that be possible? Can you believe it? Only the Wolves could do it. I swear, Trygve could play better than that. The Fergus Falls High School team wouldn’t have lost by eighteen points in a five-minute overtime. Well, anyhow, I just couldn’t summon the energy or the will to go to bed. I mean, how do you lose by eighteen points in a five-minute overtime!”

Ellie ignored Palmer’s still-fuming resentment at the hapless professional athletes, none of whom he had ever met or even seen in person. “I don’t think I’ve been able to watch television beyond midnight since Maj was born, and that’s at least twenty-four years ago.”

“Don’t go getting old on me, Ellie.”

“So staying up until almost one o’clock recaptures lost youth, huh? Go look in the mirror and tell yourself that. You look like death eating a cracker.”

“I know,” Palmer admitted, stifling a yawn. “I’ll go to bed earlier tonight, right after Saturday Night Live.”

“Why do you still watch that show? It hasn’t been funny for years!” The conversation had been repeated in several dozen variations every winter Saturday morning over the last two decades. And for the past few years, Saturday morning had become ever more delicious. He and Ellie had celebrated their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary just last summer—a fun and sentimental celebration created by their three children. Fifteen years ago, Knutson had looked forward to going into the office on Saturday mornings because of the peace, quiet, and the absence of Saturday morning cartoons. Now, his elder daughter Maj had graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College and was in her second year of law school at the University of Minnesota. His second daughter, Amy, was a junior at Concordia College, and only Trygve remained in the nest. But Trygve, as befitting a senior in high school with a busy Friday- night schedule, rarely rose before eleven on a Saturday morning.

Palmer loved his leisurely breakfasts with Ellie. Even if they had nothing in particular to say to each other, which was rare, he loved sitting across the table from her, occasionally looking at her short, graying, light-brown hair as it spilled over her pale green eyes. She was, in truth, quite a bit plumper than the day they were married, but Palmer professed not to have noticed. This was not only politic on his part, it was also fair, for Palmer realized that he, too, had thickened in the middle. As he ate his oat bran with half a banana, he inwardly craved two scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausages, toast and jam, and a chocolate-chip cookie with his third cup of coffee. Instead, with cholesterol on his mind, he decided to smear some cream cheese on a rusk.

Palmer Knutson had been serving the citizens of Otter Tail County for thirty-six years, first as deputy and, for the last twenty years, as sheriff. Saturday mornings in January are not peak times for crime fighting, and, as the sheriff had assembled a capable team of deputies, he was able to stay away from the office more and more.

Knutson was rarely to be found in his official uniform. The last time he wore his entire uniform together was when the governor had visited Fergus Falls. He didn’t like the governor, and had acted in a quite unneutral manner in helping Ellie campaign for his opponent, but the governor of Minnesota deserves respect and Palmer was finally able to find all the parts of his uniform. If he looked like a sheriff then, he certainly did not look like one now. He hunched over the breakfast table wearing a pair of doeskin slippers, an unfashionable pair of Lee jeans, worn and faded to highlight the least attractive parts of his body, and a filthy Vikings sweatshirt. He hadn’t quite gotten around to brushing either his teeth or his hair. He pushed his bifocals back into place and, unwilling and unable to further defend the folly of staying up to watch horror movies, he picked up the Minneapolis Star Tribune and gratefully turned to the New York Times crossword puzzle.

Completing the crossword puzzle on a weekday was no longer a challenge, but the Saturday puzzle, well, now, that was a challenge accepted only by the intrepid. Three minutes into the puzzle, however, the telephone rang. Desperately trying to remember a three-letter word for “table scrap,” Palmer hoped the call wasn’t for him. As he frantically filled in “ort,” Ellie said, “It’s for you, dear. Orly Peterson. Says it’s important.”

Having lost all concentration, Palmer gave in, tossed the newspaper aside, and picked up the telephone. “Yah, Orly. What’s up? … John Hofstead? … ‘Pinky’? … How long? … What was he doing out there? … Is that right? What have you done so far? … Uh- huh … Well, get anybody you can find and go out there and organize a search party. It didn’t snow last night and it was pretty still, so there should be tracks to indicate if he ever left the lake. There are quite a few fish houses on that lake, aren’t there? … Well, be sure you check every one of them. If he spent all night out in this cold, his chances of survival are not good. I’ll come in to the office pretty soon, but don’t wait for me … Yah, uh-huh … You bet. See ya.”

Ellie had done the best she could to follow the conversation on Palmer’s end. “Did something happen to ‘Pinky’ Hofstead?”

Palmer stood with the telephone receiver still in his hand. In a worried voice he replied, “Yah, he’s missing. Orly’s going to put together a search party. I suppose I’d better get down to the office.”

“Where is he?”

Palmer peered over the top of his bifocals and said, “Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?”

“No, I mean, where was he when he was last seen?”

“It seems there was some sort of company retreat up at the Otter Slide Resort near Vergas. For reasons best known to themselves they decided it would be fun to go snowmobiling. Apparently Hofstead never returned from the ride. Everybody just assumed he had quit early and had gone back to the Otter Slide. Martha didn’t wait up for him, slept right through, and didn’t notice that he hadn’t come in until this morning.”

“She just called now? She must be a sound sleeper!”

“I don’t know. Orly implied that the guy who runs the place, somebody called Hoffman, had conducted his own search and fooled around much longer than he should have.”

“I hope he wasn’t outside last night. How cold did it get, anyway?”

“When Trygve came home last night,” said Palmer, “he said it showed eighteen below on the bank sign, and that was only a little after eleven. They said on the Creature Feature that the one o’clock temperature in Fargo was 23 below. I don’t think it got that cold here, but out on the lake it might have been even colder.”

“Why in the world would anybody be outside snowmobiling in that kind of weather?” asked Ellie, with a mixture of awe and disgust.

“You’re asking the wrong man. I’ve never found that kind of weather to be either fun or invigorating. A cozy furnace is a measure of man’s continuing evolution. I suppose I’d better put on something that looks a little better if I’m going to go to the office.”

At that moment the phone rang again and the sheriff immediately snatched at the receiver. “Yah. Hello. Knutson’s … Ah, no … No … Oh, that’s a shame … Who found him again? … Yeah, I know him. He’s the mailman out there, isn’t he? … But has it been positively identified as Hofstead? … Okay, well, are they sure it was an accident? … Well, go out there and investigate the scene. Take pictures, all the usual stuff. Then go to the Otter Slide and talk to Martha. See that relatives are notified and see that she gets home all right. Get the medical examiner to give the body a quick look, get it to the funeral home, and get everybody out of the cold.”

After a long pause, during which time Ellie observed Palmer impatiently wrapping the telephone cord around his fingers and rolling his eyes, she heard, “Yah, you do that … No, not anymore. You can handle everything. It’s your weekend on duty … Sure, I’ll be home all day. Call anytime.”

Ellie looked up anxiously. “John Hofstead?”

“Dead. Killed in a snowmobile accident. Know that big concrete loon on the shore of that lake outside of Vergas?”

“Sure. Everybody knows the Vergas loon.”

“Well, it seems Hofstead got a little more intimate with it than he should have. According to the guy who found him, he drove his snowmobile right under the loon and smashed his head against its breast. The accident probably killed him, but even if it didn’t, he could never have survived lying out there all night. The medical examiner can tell us, but it probably makes no difference.” The sheriff sighed and added under his breath, “not to ‘Pinky,’ anyhow.”