Annie click-clacked back to her own desk and cleared her screen. ‘Lord, I hate it when people try to keep me out of a conversation. Forward the path you took, Grace. I don’t care how many firewalls there are, I’m going to knock them down one by one until I get in there.’
‘I put the path on the network so we could all work it, but this is going to take a while…’ The phone interrupted her. She picked up when she saw Minneapolis Police come up on the caller ID. She listened for a minute, then said, ‘Give me the name, and then give us five minutes.’ She ended the call quickly, then spun her chair to look at the rest of them. ‘Forget the chat room for now. That was Tommy Espinoza from MPD. He needs some help in a hurry.’
‘Something to do with the snowman murders?’ Annie asked.
‘No. It’s a different case. We have to find a woman before her ex-husband does.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘It sounds like it might be real bad.’
Harley brought his screen to life with the jiggle of his mouse. ‘What do we have to go on?’
‘Just a name. Julie Albright.’
‘Great. Do we even know what state she’s in?’
‘We’ll start with Minnesota.’
‘Why are the cops having such trouble finding her?’ Roadrunner asked.
‘She’s in hiding.’
‘But if the cops can’t find her, how’s the ex-husband going to?’
‘He stole some files. He knows where she is.’
‘So does the IRS,’ Harley said, his fingers flying over his keyboard. ‘Why didn’t Espinoza try that?’
‘He did. It’s a sealed file.’
Harley’s hands dropped to his lap. ‘Jeez, Grace, the confidentials are a bitch to break into. This is going to take a hell of a lot longer than five minutes.’
‘Then we’d better get started.’
Ten minutes later, while the rest of them were still clattering on their keyboards, Annie clapped her hands and said, ‘Found her… oh, for heaven’s sake, would you look at that. Her address is Bitterroot.’
‘Our Bitterroot?’ Grace asked.
‘The very same. Dundas County.’
Harley made a face. ‘That place up in the sticks where we tweaked all that high-tech security last fall? Who the hell lives at a corporation?’
Grace picked up the phone and started to dial Tommy Espinoza. ‘She probably uses her place of work as a mailing address. She’s in hiding, remember?’
16
By the time Gino and Magozzi started to head back to the Cities, the snow had stopped and the clouds had moved east into Wisconsin. As far as Gino was concerned, the view had been a whole lot better when snow was obliterating the landscape. He eyed the snow-drifted fields and scattered farms with the deep suspicion of a man who has found himself in a foreign country.
‘I don’t know, Leo. You ask me, farmland is just plain butt-ugly. Too many empty fields with nothing to look at.’
Magozzi smiled, mostly because he was in a warm car on his way back to the city, and the snowplows had managed to swipe the roads since the harrowing drive out here. ‘In the summer those so-called empty fields produce a lot of what makes you the corn-fed beauty you are.’
‘Well, they ought to scrap some of the cornfields and grow a few restaurants. I swear to God, when we passed those cows a minute ago, I started salivating.’
‘Five miles to Dundas City and that place Sampson recommended.’
Gino snorted. ‘Yeah, right. The Swedish Grill, which has got to be a local joke. You ever see a Swedish chef with his own cooking show? There’s a reason for that, aside from the fact that all their food is white. They’ve got no cuisine, no palates, and no business grilling stuff.’
‘You want me to drive right by?’
‘Hell no. We could starve to death before we hit the next place.’
They blinked their way past a cluster of buildings that called itself a town. It had a weird name Gino couldn’t pronounce, and even weirder letters, like o’s with umlauts and slashes through them. A large sign trumpeted some auspicious connection to a sister town in the old country. Gino couldn’t pronounce that one, either.
A little farther down the road Gino eyed a highway sign and read aloud: ‘“Carl Moberg slept here.” Who’s Carl Moberg and why do we care where he slept?’
‘He was a famous Swedish writer.’
‘Yeah, so what did he write?’
‘The Emigrants. It was about the hardships of settling Minnesota.’
‘Oh, yeah. Hey, I think I saw the movie. Isn’t that the one where they get caught in a blizzard and have to cut their horse open and put their kid inside so he doesn’t freeze to death?’
‘I think it was an ox.’
‘Whatever. Christ, I had nightmares for a year after I saw that. Kind of makes you wonder why anybody settled here in the first place.’
‘Brilliant marketing. The governor needed settlers for his brand-new state, so he started giving away free land to anybody who’d take it. He glossed over the Siberian winters and the mosquitoes and focused on the rich cropland and fjordlike surroundings. He sold it as kind of a home away from home, and it worked like a dream in the old country. They came in droves from Scandinavia.’
Gino looked skeptically out at the barren landscape of snowdrifts, frozen lakes, and skeletal trees and thought about the dead horse or ox or whatever it was. ‘They must have been really pissed off when they got here. How the hell do you know all this stuff, anyhow? You sound like an encyclopedia entry.’
‘I paid attention in history class. Why don’t you know this stuff? Isn’t Rolseth a Scandinavian name?’
‘I always thought it was German, but what do I know? Hell, when you think about the history of the Vikings, you gotta figure pretty much everybody has a little Scandinavian blood in them one way or the other.’
‘Good point.’
Bars and gas stations and unidentifiable pole buildings started cropping up along the roadside as they approached another dot on the map. Gino was staring intently out the windshield and made a funny snuffling sound.
‘What?’
Gino gave him a goofy smile and pointed. ‘There’s a teapot in the sky.’
Magozzi looked up through the windshield at a water tower that was, incredibly, shaped like an old-fashioned teapot, covered in rosemaled flowers and emblazoned with the message: VÄLKOMMEN TO AMERICA’S LITTLE SWEDEN. He couldn’t help but smile. ‘By God, there is.’
‘Gotta be the only one like it in the world.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Come on, don’t be such a killjoy. There’s probably some deep meaning behind it.’
‘Or not.’
‘Yeah, or not. But it’s unique, you gotta give it that. And how often do you see flowers on a water tower? Makes you feel better about drinking the water, right? I mean, White Bear has a bear on their water tower and you can’t help but think about the whole bear in the woods thing.’ Gino heard a muted beep and pulled out his cell phone. ‘Well, glory hallelujah. This piece of crap finally picked up a signal.’
‘Weather’s clearing up. Either that, or we’re close to what might be the only tower for miles. Better talk fast.’
Gino nodded and pushed speed dial. ‘Got a pile of messages from the office while this thing was in a coma. Maybe Tinker and McLaren solved the case while we were gone and we can go on vacation. Hey, Tinker, we’re on our way back. What’s the word? What do you mean, turn around? We just left, and let me tell you, this place is like a third-world country. Instead of cell towers, they got teapots in the sky and houses in the middle of lakes… all right, all right, hang on.’ Gino pulled out his notebook and a pen and started scribbling while he listened.