Alone at night, p.5
Alone at Night, page 5
When Sig hung up he felt like some of the weight of the case had been lifted from his shoulders.
It was just his gut that still felt tight.
9
The first evidence that the BCA’s media strategy had worked came a day later when a reporter from Channel Six in the Twin Cities showed up. In hours, a crew from another station arrived, and by late afternoon Sig had had calls from the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
It was disconcerting to Sig to have the Twin Cities reporters right in front of him, in the flesh. Redstone got its television news from stations in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the Twin Cities. Sioux Falls was closer by seventy-five miles, but Redstone being in Minnesota, most people watched Twin Cities television. So the reporters turning up were all familiar faces.
Their involvement in the case felt like a point of no return to Sig. For one dreamlike, irrational moment, it felt to him like he’d made a decision that changed what had happened. It felt like if they’d never got the media involved, the case would be less real. But with television crews camping out in the station, with the phone ringing constantly in response to what people were seeing on the news, reading in their daily newspaper, there was no denying that Andrea’s disappearance was anything less than real. The Minneapolis Star Tribune carried an article on the front page of the Metro-State section on the fourth day of the investigation. It was short, with no jump to a back page, but it included Andrea’s photo and sketches of the two individuals believed to have phoned the police from the One-Stop the night of Andrea’s disappearance. The Strib article was the first media source to publicize an offer from the district’s congressman for a $25,000 reward for information leading to Andrea’s safe return.
The reward offer annoyed Sig on three counts. Mostly because it was a grandstand gesture offered by a pol who aspired to be the next junior senator from Minnesota. Sig saw it as a crass, self-interested move to use a tragedy for political gain. Then there was the fact that Sig had been a lifelong Democratic Farmer-Labor voter and the congressman in question was a right wing Independent Republican.
Sig’s subjective judgments about the reward offer aside, a more practical complaint was that the reward increased the number of nutcase calls, but didn’t produce anything substantial.
All they got that was even worth following up on was an elderly couple who said they’d seen a young woman running across a field a quarter of a mile from the One-Stop around the time Andrea had gone missing. Two people swore they’d seen Mike Krause’s car in town the night of the disappearance. A guy who’d been at the One-Stop early in Andrea’s shift called because there’d been a car sitting outside the One-Stop when he’d gone in and the car was still there when he left—even though he hadn’t seen any other customers in the One-Stop.
None of these reports could be verified and under questioning, all of the witness reports had serious gaps. Only the wife had seen a figure running near the One-Stop and the wife, who was seventy-seven, had cataracts and couldn’t give any specific details about the figure she thought she’d seen running. And neither the husband nor the wife were sure about the time they’d seen someone running.
As it happened, Mike Krause hadn’t taken his car back to school with him. Part of why he’d wanted Andrea to drive up to his college before Christmas vacation was to bring the car and drive him back. And Mike’s alibi had checked out, solid as steel.
The fellow who’d been suspicious about the car parked at the One-Stop couldn’t give a detailed description of the vehicle. When Sig questioned him about Andrea’s car, the witness didn’t rule out that that was the vehicle he’d seen.
Most frustrating to Sig was that neither the media coverage nor the reward had gotten them closer to the couple who’d come into the One-Stop and made the call to the station. That made Sig nervous. Why would someone take the time and trouble to call in and then not respond to efforts to question them? The only reason Sig could come up with was that there was a reason they didn’t want to be connected to Andrea’s disappearance.
Sig would have given a lot to know what that reason was.
* * *
For the next week Sig slept only when not getting sleep interfered with his ability to think. He personally interviewed every student in Andrea Bergstad’s class, every teacher she’d had since junior high, and all the employees at the One-Stop. Nothing he found out in the process gave him anything substantial to follow up.
He had spent the first days of the investigation dreading calls and visits from Bob Bergstad. The effort it took to be encouraging and supportive—without giving false hope—drained Sig. Now, well into the second week of the investigation, Sig suddenly realized he hadn’t heard from the Bergstads since they’d talked about Bob making contacts with elected officials.
Bob and Ruth Bergstad were naturally reserved people who had little interest in sharing their problems with the public. They had cooperated with the media during the investigation because they knew it was their best chance to find Andrea. But it had been hard for them.
For anybody who’d known them, how hard it had been showed on their faces, in how they stood, in their voices. Some folks thought the Bergstads were cold people. Sig thought they were—always had been—people who didn’t know how to show emotion to each other, much less people they’d never met.
People who’d known the Bergstads for years also knew that Andrea’s disappearance was not their first piece of bad luck. They had gone, in the space of a couple of years, from being an influential family who’d been active participants in the community’s civic and political life into a family that had been stripped of material well-being and social position.
Bob had been a farmer, a cautious man who hadn’t been seduced by the temptation of expensive new equipment that had buried many farmers under a crushing burden of debt. But land was a siren song that proved irresistible. Land was more than a necessary component to his life’s occupation. Land, and the possession of land, was spiritual, it went to the root of why Bob Bergstad was a farmer.
When two sections of land adjacent to Bob’s property had come onto the market, Bob had taken on a heavy debt load to finance the purchase. He’d had no trouble getting a loan. Those were the days of asset-based lending, and asset-based lending had been fueled by soaring land prices.
When land prices took a precipitous fall, anyone who’d borrowed based on the value of their land fell, too. Including Bob Bergstad. He’d had to sell the two sections he’d borrowed to buy and almost half of the property he’d owned outright. What was left was not enough to support his family. He’d taken on odd jobs in town and he’d helped out on other farms during planting and harvest seasons. There were many others who’d suffered losses of both money and dignity in this far-spread decline of the farm economy, but none in Redstone Township who’d fallen as far as Bob Bergstad.
People became uncomfortable around him, not because of anything he said or did, but because he had become a doppelganger of bad luck. A ghostly reminder that good fortune and present blessings were not to be taken for granted, not to be trusted. He and Ruth became increasingly isolated, more and more separate from the life of the community at whose center they had once lived.
Ruth Bergstad’s problems went even deeper. She’d had several miscarriages before Andrea had been born. After the birth she had veered into religious fanaticism. In another time, in another place, her problems might have been recognized as postpartum depression. In a rural community in the early 1980s, she was left alone.
Her fanaticism intensified, governed by a mystical sort of fundamentalism that was recognizable only to her, ruled by a God only she knew. During the years that Bob had been active in Republican politics, she’d organized a group of fellow Right to Life supporters to lobby at the state legislature in St. Paul. But even with a shared purpose, the group fell apart under the impossible pressure of Ruth’s rigid view of morality. For a time she traveled to Sioux Falls or to Omaha to meet with groups there. The result was always the same. Within months she would leave the group in anger at their lack of true understanding, or the group would begin to distance itself from Ruth, recognizing that her commitment was tainted by something beyond what any of the group felt or shared.
During the years when Bob and Ruth were prosperous farmers and leaders of the community, Ruth was viewed as eccentric. Independence and strongly held views were familiar rural traits. After their fall from good fortune, people continued to feel a distant sympathy for Bob, but their tolerance for Ruth evaporated. She was disliked. The words “insane” and “crazy” began to be used to describe her. No one wanted to think about what the Bergstads’ life was like on their remote farmstead.
That Andrea had been a golden child from birth had left Ruth unchanged. At first people said the child was a reward for what the Bergstads had suffered trying to have children. Even after their financial fall, Andrea had seemed to be both a compensation for what had been lost and a promise for a brighter future.
And now this. Their golden child was gone and what remained was two isolated adults who gave every appearance of being ill-suited to consoling one another. It seemed to everybody who knew them that their destruction was complete.
What had remained unspoken between Sig and Bob had been that they both knew that Andrea working at the One-Stop—Andrea working alone at night at the One-Stop—wouldn’t have happened if the Bergstads hadn’t fallen on hard times. Anything Andrea had by way of clothes or even buying gas for the old junker of a car that she drove, she paid for herself out of what she earned working at the One-Stop. What she didn’t spend on necessities, she saved for college, because if she wanted to go to college, there was no question finding the money would be up to her.
The Bergstad family’s history was on Sig’s mind as he considered calling to bring them up-to-date on the case. He sat with his hand on the phone, even lifted the receiver before he thought better of it. It troubled him that Bob hadn’t called. Sig felt he needed to see both the Bergstads to assure himself that things were in order. It wasn’t something he looked forward to doing, but it felt necessary.
It took him fifteen minutes from the station to the Bergstads’ driveway. He hadn’t been out this way for a long time, so the condition of the fence, the appearance of the house as he drove up, surprised him. The Bergstads’ place had always been a showplace. Lawns mowed way out to the road, white fence posts straight and looking freshly painted.
Out on the open prairie, it only took a winter or two of neglect, a couple of summers of blazing heat and thunderstorms, to make a place look shabby. What Sig found today was evidence that there had been at least a couple of years of neglect. There were weeds all the way along the driveway from the road to the house, and parts of the wood fence had been replaced with makeshift baling wire.
The house was no better. The last time Sig had been out here all the house shades were partially lowered to the same level; awnings were sharp and trim. Today, shades were either all the way down or at random angles. The awnings were frayed, one hanging loose on the second story of the house.
Sig now understood why Bob had been adamant that he’d come into town to meet with the media and to talk to Sig about the case. He’d said he hadn’t wanted the media to upset Ruth, which was believable. He’d said he wanted Sig to spend his time working the case, not driving back and forth between town and their place, which had made sense.
But seeing the property as it was now made Sig sick at heart. He’d heard people say the Bergstads’ place was looking run-down, but seeing it for himself brought home the change that this family had suffered. This wasn’t a home, it wasn’t a place lived in by people with limited money. It was a place where people lived who had given up hope.
Sig’s next emotions were embarrassment and guilt. He was embarrassed for Bob’s sake. He doubted Ruth would care much, one way or another, but he knew Bob would mind Sig seeing the state of things. And he felt guilty that he’d paid so little attention to what had happened to the Bergstads since they’d sold most of their land several years ago.
He weighed these emotions against whether he should return to town or go on up to the house. The concern he’d felt on realizing he hadn’t heard from Bob came to mind and decided him. He continued, slowly, down the driveway, hoping the Bergstads would see him coming and have a chance to prepare themselves for a surprise visitor.
Bob came out on the porch before Sig opened the car door.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
Sig closed his eyes. Something else he hadn’t bothered to consider. What a damn fool he was. Of course his coming out here when he’d never come before would make the Bergstads think something important had happened. Probably something bad, or he would have called.
He shook his head as he got out of the car, then he lied. “No, no,” he said, holding up both hands and making a gesture of dismissal. “I was just driving out this way, realized we hadn’t talked lately, so thought I’d stop by. Nothing to be concerned about. Thought maybe Ruth would pour me a cup of coffee.”
Sig had braced himself to find the interior of the house as decayed as the exterior. While it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, it felt sad and airless. Surfaces were dusty. Where shades were open, light shafted through the room without adding brightness. Sig had felt his house was bleak after his wife’s death, but compared to what he found here, his place was downright homey.
It was Bob who made the coffee. Sig sat at the kitchen table, picking up a newspaper that had been lying on the table, folded to the crossword. It had pleased Sig that one of the Bergstads did crosswords. He liked to think of them being able to take their minds off Andrea. Being able to take their minds off each other, for that matter. Then he noticed that only three or four of the open boxes had been filled in and that the newspaper was a week old. He pushed it aside, saddened by how much the old newspaper, the empty crossword, told him about the Bergstads’ lives.
To fill the silence as Bob puttered with the coffee, Sig said, “Like I was saying, there isn’t much new. But we haven’t been in touch for a while…”
Bob walked back to the table with two steaming mugs of coffee. He sighed as he sat down at the table. Then he held his mug in both hands, as if he were cold. It was something Sig had noticed years back, a way of distinguishing a man who worked with his hands from a man who didn’t. A man who worked with his hands could hold a scorching hot cup in his hands without flinching. That was Bob. A fellow like Sig had to let it sit awhile.
Bob still didn’t say anything. Sig tried again. “One problem we’ve got is that media coverage has tapered off. A case like this, we need the coverage to get new leads. I plan on calling the BCA later today and seeing what they suggest. They’re good at this media game—you and Ruth up to going through another round with the press?”
Bob shrugged. “Whatever.” He drank from the mug. It seemed to Sig like Bob drank the coffee to avoid having to say more.
“How’s Ruth holding up?”
“She’s managing. We’re both managing.”
Bob turned the hot cup in his hands, his lower lip extending, his eyes cast down into the cup.
Sig looked around the kitchen. “Maybe being out here isn’t the best place to be right now. I mean, the two of you, alone. Especially now with winter setting in. You won’t have much work out here until March, most of your work will be in town through the winter, won’t it?”
Bob didn’t answer. Sig realized Bob might be thinking about the cost of renting a place in town. That thought gave Sig an idea.
“Maynard and Aline Iverson will be heading down to Arizona in another week or so. They stopped by the station to arrange security at their house while they’re gone. Said they wished they could find someone to stay in the house while they were gone. Why don’t I give them a call, see if they’d be open to you and Ruth staying for a few weeks…”
Bob shook his head. “Ruth wouldn’t have that. Living in another woman’s house.”
He hadn’t bothered to thank Sig for the suggestion. Sig couldn’t blame him for that, it had been a shot-in-the-dark kind of idea. Said more to make Sig feel as if he were doing something useful than having any real chance of being something the Bergstads would want to do.
Bob seemed to hear how abrupt his rejection had been. He looked up at Sig and gave him a weak smile. “That, and the Iversons being ELCA Lutherans. That would never do for Ruth.”
Sig said, “Ruth here?”
Bob tipped his head in a vague direction away from the kitchen. “She’s upstairs. She’d have come down, but…” He let the sentence hang, then said, “I’ll tell her what you said about the media. But it might just be me this time. Ruth’s feeling more and more like this whole thing is in God’s hands. Like there isn’t much we can do one way or another.”
It was a response Sig took personally. It was a foolish thing for Ruth to say, but Sig could hardly blame her. After all, what had he accomplished in the investigation in the past couple of weeks?
* * *
For no reason Sig could figure, as he drove away from the Bergstads’, down the narrow, derelict driveway, it was as if Andrea were with him in the car.
He drove for miles, unnerved by the sensation, until he spotted the Redstone water tower on the horizon. It was then that the meaning of the experience came to Sig.
He thought about Andrea Bergstad driving out that driveway every day to come in to town. To go to school, to go to work at the One-Stop. He thought about what Andrea left behind her when she headed toward town. A depressed father. A crazy mother. A house that was falling down around her. Driving down that driveway must have felt like an escape to her. Seeing the water tower coming up on the horizon must have felt like safety and sanity were within reach.
Even going to work at the One-Stop, alone at night, must have felt safer to Andrea than staying in that house.
