“I hate the cold and snow,” Floyd said, waiting for the air conditioning to overcome the accumulated heat inside the car. He turned toward the interstate. “But I hate this miserable hot weather more.”
“I don’t know. We keep the apartment kind of cool in the winter and I have to wear so many clothes to keep warm. I like the summer better because I can walk around the house in panties and bare feet.” Barb checked to see if Floyd was startled. When her comments didn’t elicit a response she added, “Sandy makes me wear clothes when I answer the door.”
“You know, we run across a lot of situations when we get called to people’s houses. Having someone naked answer the door wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve experienced.”
“Has Sandy told you about my tattoos?” Barb asked with a twinkle in her eyes. She had fun shocking and embarrassing people with stories about her lurid past and her tattoos.
“There are rumors,” Floyd said, but quickly added, “but I don’t need confirmation.”
“You guys are so straight. Don’t you ever let your hair down? Sandy always seems to be so… modulated. He’s never really high and he’s never really low. He just plods along in second gear all the time. Are you like that, too?”
“We pretty much have to be like that on the job, and that carries over into our personal lives, too. If we lose control, people could get hurt or killed.”
“I know! And that’s what makes life exciting. If you live on the edge once in a while you let off steam.”
“If you live on the edge, you sometimes fall off,” Floyd replied. “I like Sandy. He’s a nice guy and a good deputy. His head and his heart are in the right places.”
“We’re getting married,” Barb said without emotion.
“Really!”
“Sandy asked me a long time ago, but I wasn’t ready. We’ve been together for a couple of years now and I guess it’ll be okay. I can’t see myself with anyone else and he’s the first guy I’ve really been able to trust.”
“That’s exciting,” Floyd said. “You guys will be making all sorts of wedding plans. Have you made any decision about a date yet?”
“Not yet. But the wedding won’t be anything too fancy. I think we’ll find a secluded spot and have a sunrise wedding. I’ve been checking out a lot of places when I’ve been taking wildlife pictures and there are some spots where the summer sunrises are spectacular. I think I’d like to do that.”
They discussed wedding options for the half-hour drive to the Sturgeon Lake exit from I-35. Floyd took the south road around Sturgeon Lake and turned south at Marge’s Resort where hand-painted signs advertised pizza and boat rentals. As they got further from the lake the clutter of lakeshore cabins gave way to open expanses of woods with mailboxes at irregular intervals interspersed with driveways blocked with large farm-style metal gates or chains.
“This seems like an unlikely spot to bring someone,” Floyd said. “The picture of the five friends looks like it was taken in the Beroun bar, and the people all lived between Pine City and Hinckley. I can’t come up with a good reason to drive way the heck up here in December after the bars close to tie Aaron Roberts to a tree so someone could carve up his chest.”
“I didn’t think about it,” Barb said with a shrug. “I just started driving the roads around Passenger Lake that looked like good secluded spots to torture someone. Nobody lives out here in the winter, but the roads are plowed. I thought it seemed like a perfect spot.”
Floyd turned off the blacktop and onto a gravel road. “I guess we’re looking at it from different directions. I’m thinking that this was a crime of opportunity, and you’re thinking it was premeditated. But, even if it was premeditated, this seems like a strange place to drive to in the middle of the winter.”
Floyd turned onto a one-lane gravel road and drove slowly through the narrow lane. The opening through underbrush was barely wider than the Crown Victoria for a hundred yards until it suddenly opened into a park-like glade with large oaks and neatly groomed grass. Directly ahead of them was a red summer cottage, and beyond that the sparkling waters of Passenger Lake. The road turned to the right, and a string of eight cottages in various colors and similar architecture came into view.
“There!” Barb said, pointing to a large oak with an unusually low branch on the east side of the road. “Park here and I’ll show you.”
“I hate to get out of the car now that the air conditioning has finally cooled it off.” Barb was out of the car and walking before Floyd finished the sentence. He gave the dispatcher their location and reported that he would be out of service. Barb had the picture out of the envelope and was walking around the tree.
“Here,” she said, aligning the picture with the tree. “You can see from this angle how that one low branch is unique and it’s right here in the picture.” She held the picture out for Floyd to examine. “Oak trees almost never have branches this low. Most people trim them or they get broken off.”
“You’re right, that does look like the tree, and there can’t be many that look like this in all northern Minnesota.”
“See,” Barb said, “even the birch tree in the background lines up. This has to be the spot.”
A screen door slammed, diverting their attention from the photo. A lanky gray-haired man walked slowly toward them as Floyd slipped the photo into the envelope.
“That girl said she’d be back with the cops,” the man said. “I thought she was kidding. I’m Ron Birkholz.” The man extended his hand.
“Floyd Swenson. Are you the owner?”
“For more than fifty years. This girl said there may have been a murder here back in ’98. Is that so?”
“It appears that this tree shows up in an incriminating picture. Do you know anything about a guy who disappeared back then? He was a local guy named Aaron Roberts.”
“I can’t remember what I had for breakfast much less what happened when those A-rabs were having their tiff.”
Floyd grinned at the political incorrectness. “Are you a year-round resident?”
“Nah, I’m what you locals call a ‘Cidiot.’ That’s short for City Idiot. I live down in the Twin Cities and come up here summers. The locals tell me we’re all too demanding. I guess it’s just that we get used to the pace of the Cities and it used to be kind of infuriating to see how slow things moved here sometimes. Now that I’m retired it’s not such a big deal.” As he spoke, a gray three-legged cat came hopping around the corner of the cabin and approached them.
“Do you remember finding a rope lying by this tree when you came up one spring?” Barb asked, garnering a skeptical look from Floyd.
Birkholz’s eyes narrowed. “You know, we might’ve.” He started walking toward a storage shed behind the cottage with Floyd, Barb, and the cat following.
The inside of the small shed was unlit and cluttered with a lawnmower, tools, a chainsaw, gas cans, and assorted gardening implements. Birkholz pulled an extension cord off a peg on the wall, then removed a hank of dirty cotton clothesline, handing the dusty rope to Floyd. Floyd inspected the rope and noted a knot away from the cut ends as the cat rubbed against his leg.
“Uncle Tripod,” Birkholz said, “stop pestering the cop.”
“You found it like this?” Floyd asked, holding up the cut ends of the six-foot rope.
“I guess. Seems to me there was that knot in it with the ends cut. It looked like someone had tied some rusty metal with it, or left it on some metal. You can see the rust spots on it still.”
“Why’d you save it?” Barb asked.
Birkholz shrugged. “I don’t know. My wife used to say I saved everything. I guess I thought that a man could never have too much spare rope. I think the boys used it to hang the deer they got back in ’99 and ’05.”