TWELVE

Orly Peterson hung up the phone in his office in the Otter Tail County Law Enforcement Center and took a long-deep breath. He liked to be in charge. It had been almost a year since the sheriff had promoted him to detective, and he appreciated the increased authority that came with the job. Moreover, he felt that he had earned the confidence of his boss. They weren’t really friends, and never saw each other socially, but Peterson’s initial reaction, that Knutson was little more than a Norwegian country bumpkin, was obviously not true and he was in the process of gaining a great deal of respect for the man. On his part, Knutson had agonized over Peterson’s promotion because he just didn’t like the smarty-pants attitude of the young Swede who somehow thought a degree in criminal justice from Fergus Falls State University made him an ace crime fighter. But the sheriff was noted for his fairness, Peterson was the most qualified for the promotion, and, with a sickening knowledge that he was doing the right thing, he made Peterson his right-hand man.

It had worked out better than he could have hoped. Peterson was a computer whiz, and Knutson, who hated his own computer, could increasingly fob off all the real computer work onto his deputy. Moreover, Knutson, who used to be sort of a wunderkind of law enforcement himself, now had to admit he was getting a little long in the tooth. Orly really could relate better to the younger set, while Knutson could handle all the old people. The fact that Knutson now trusted Orly to handle the death of a prominent elderly businessman was indeed a reflection of Peterson’s increased stature.

Snapping into action in his office, Peterson took the time to admire himself in his mirror and saw a reasonable facsimile of a television action-adventure star. In his view, anyone could wear a suit, but a uniform? Now that was something special! His tan uniform was spotless and pressed. The dark-brown epaulets sat easily on his broad shoulders. On the points of each collar were the gold-plated initials O.T.C.S.D., polished to pick up the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Department badge pinned over his heart and the gold five-pointed star clasp that kept his perfectly knotted brown tie in place. “Serve the people,” he said, as he reached for the telephone.

In a matter of minutes the deputy had arranged for the medical examiner to accompany an ambulance to pick up the body. He also arranged for another deputy, Chuck Schultz, best known for his photography skills and for his ability to teach the D.A.R.E. program to frighten kids off drugs, to accompany him and to take photographs of the accident scene. Finally, he called the Vergas mailman who had discovered the body.

After six rings the telephone was answered with an anxious “Hello?”

“Is this the Loon’s Nest Restaurant?” Orly asked.

“Yah.”

“Is Arnie Holte still there? The mailman?”

“Yah, I’ll get him.”

After a short pause another voice answered, “Yah?”

Orly identified himself and asked, “You the guy that found the body this morning?”

“Yah.”

“You identified him as John Hofstead.”

“Yah.”

“How can you be sure it’s John Hofstead?”

“Everybody knows Hofstead. I’ve been buying insurance from him for thirty years.”

“Right. So, who have you informed of his death?”

“You guys.”

“Nobody else?”

“No, just the people in the cafe here in Vergas.”

“Many people in the cafe?”

“Yah, there is. Everybody feels real bad. They all knew John Hofstead. As one of them said, ‘He was the only insurance man a guy could ever trust.’”

“So who’s out there with the body now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anybody is.”

With a note of censure in his voice, Orly asked, “You mean you just left him out there?”

“Well, sure. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? They always say on TV that you aren’t supposed to touch anything. Once I found out who it was I just came into town and reported it. There certainly wasn’t anything I could do for John. He’s frozen stiff as a Congressman’s handshake, and I figured if I stayed out on that lake much longer I would be just like him.”

“So nobody’s out there?”

“Well, maybe a few people from the cafe drove out to have a look.”

Orly had a vision of dozens of people milling around the accident site, playing with the body to see just how stiff it was. To Holte he said, “Look, would you mind meeting me at the site? Just go there and keep people away from the scene, would you?”

“You want me to go down there and stand around waiting for you to come from Fergus Falls? Do you know how cold it is? I’m telling you, it’s a bad day for brass monkeys, if you know what I mean.”

Orly acknowledged the crude, but totally apt metaphor, and said, “You don’t have to stand outside. Just wait in your car. And if anyone comes, just tell them to keep away until we get there. It won’t be that long. Now, you say it happened by that big loon?”

“Yah, from what I seen, it looked like he just got under it a little too far and he hit his head and that’s all it took.”

“All right, we’ll be right out. And Arnie?”

“Yah?”

“We really do appreciate this, you know.”

“Yah, you bet.”

Orly and Deputy Schultz picked up Dr. Jimmy Clark at his residence on Beech Avenue and, followed by an ambulance, proceeded to the scene of the accident. In spite of his youthful name, Jimmy Clark was sixty-six years old and looked every year of it. He was something of a government double-dipper in that in addition to his regular position at the state hospital, he had been the Otter Tail County medical examiner for the last twenty years. A little man swaddled in a down parka and a fur hat, he entertained Orly all the way to Vergas with his stories of cold-weather deaths he had known. It took at least forty minutes to get to Vergas in the wintertime, a fact well known by Arnie Holte, who had decided there was really no reason not to finish his second cup of coffee. He still had plenty of time to shoo away gapers and to get cold by the time Orly and Dr. Clark got there.

Arriving in Vergas, the two-vehicle procession passed through the block-long business district and drove east of town on Highway 228. Orly began to think about loons. The Vergas loon, a masterpiece of kitsch, is not as old, nor as frequently photographed as some of Minnesota’s other notable statues. Paul Bunyan and Babe grace the lake in Bemidji and claim to be America’s second-most-photographed statues+- (presumably trailing only the Statue of Liberty), but the Vergas loon is thirty years younger and has a lot of catching up to do. Likewise, although it is taller and constructed out of more permanent concrete, it is off the beaten track of motorists who may be more familiar with the fiberglass prairie chicken of Rothsay. The loon of Vergas stands about twenty feet high in a special park overlooking beautiful Long Lake. In the summer the park features a sandy beach, a changing house, a fishing pier, a swimming dock, and a water slide. The big loon seems to gaze out over the lake in a paternalistic manner to defend the rights and liberties of more normal-sized loons. Both birds, feathered and concrete, are magnificent. As the state bird of Minnesota, the loon embodies all the things Minnesotans like to believe about themselves. They are loyal (they mate for life), they care about their young (Minnesota always ranks at the top in education), and they are majestic and beautiful (all fifty states—some without merit—make this claim). But there is something very special about being at a Minnesota lake in the summer, when it finally gets dark, to hear the weird and forlorn call of a loon.

Orly had tuned out Clark’s cold-weather stories and was now reminiscing about how he had parked down by the loon with “um, what was her name? She was that tall girl who went to St. Cloud State and she …”

Clark jabbed Orly in the ribs and giggled, “So they just decided to bury him the way he was. Nobody cared back in those days. Hey, that must be the mailman you put in charge. He’s waving you over to the driveway.”

In fact, the driveway down to the park was not cleared of snow and there was barely room for three cars to park on the edge of the road. As they climbed out of the car, Orly could tell that Holte had done an acceptable job of keeping people from the scene. Only one pair of footprints, presumably his, led down to the prone figure at the base of the concrete loon. In the back seat, Deputy Schultz got out his camera, rolled down the window, and said, “How about if I just take the pictures from here? It’s so cold out that the camera is going to freeze up anyway and this gives a nice distant shot.”

“Sure, take one from here,” Peterson snapped. He did enjoy ordering lesser ranks around. “But then you get down there with us and you take pictures of everything. Stay away from the body and stay out of the tracks until you get everything photographed. Just keep the camera inside your coat until you’re ready to shoot.”

The deputy did as he was told, muttering out of earshot what he thought of Orly Peterson and his fanatic attention to detail and routine. Meanwhile, Orly surveyed the scene. It looked simple enough. Hofstead’s snowmobile had come off the lake on a big drift that carried it onto the shoreline. He had avoided the trees and apparently had meant to just drive by the loon. From the evidence of the snowmobile tracks, however, it appeared that he had failed to notice that the loon sat on a small concrete pedestal. One of the skis had clearly hit the pedestal and this would have caused the snowmobile to rise up suddenly just as the driver passed under the loon. It seemed obvious that John Hofstead, as accomplished a snowmobiler as he was, had bounced up and hit his head and had fallen from the sled, which had continued to run until it had reached the lake again. Whether he had died from the force of hitting his head against the concrete loon or whether he had been knocked unconscious, never to wake up in the sub-zero weather, was yet to be determined.

It had not snowed since the accident and the tracks of the snowmobile were clear. So, too, were the tracks made by Arnie Holte when he had discovered the body.

There were no other tracks leading from the loon to the lake or from the loon to the highway. Fifty feet beyond the loon, on the clear ice of Long Lake, rested the sleek new Polaris that had given “Pinky” Hofstead his last ride.

“Make sure you get a picture of that Polaris down there, and take a picture of the right front ski to see if it got splintered on that cement thing the loon is sitting on,” ordered the authoritarian Peterson. “Jimmy? What do you need to do here?”

“Nothing,” said the medical examiner, his mouth twisted in an expression of distaste. “I’m freezing my patoot off. Let’s get him in the ambulance and get out of here.”

With that, he waved the ambulance attendant over, and in a short time Hofstead was at last ready to conclude his Winter Wonderland Weekend. “Jimmy, why don’t you go on back with the ambulance. I’ll go on over to the Otter Slide and break the news to Mrs. Hofstead. They’re probably still searching for poor Pinky, unless somebody from the Loon’s Nest has gone over to tell them about it.” Squaring his shoulders and opening the door, Orly said, “Come on, Chuck—this is the part of the job nobody likes.”