1
I saw Roger Engstrom three times—the second two he was dead. But the first time he sat on a tufted leather chair in the Saint Paul Hotel’s Harold Stassen Suite with a Yorkshire terrier on his lap. The dog was the result of neither intelligent design nor natural selection. Man created the Yorkshire terrier, and Man had made a terrible mistake. If your full-grown dog fits in a bag designed to carry keys and a wallet, it’s not a dog you’re toting around—it’s an accessory.
Roger had curly blond hair threaded with silver, was tall and lean except for a soft belly that hung over his belt. He wore a navy long-sleeved polo tucked into khaki pants that rode up his legs revealing socks festooned with images of computer chips. Duck boots covered his feet, protection from Minnesota’s March slush.
He scratched between the little creature’s ears and said, “Thank you for seeing us on short notice, Nils.” His voice was high-pitched and soft. “The Missing Persons unit of the St. Paul police are doing everything they can, but we know about your success in Duluth and then again last year in Edina. We hear you’re the best there is, Nils. And our Linnea deserves the best.”
Roger referred to murder cases, not missing persons, but I kept that to myself. “When did you first notice your daughter was missing?”
Roger looked to my right. His wife, Anne, sat on the loveseat beside me. I thought it strange Roger chose not to sit next to her but rather in the lone chair. It was his meeting, I supposed, and he was going to run it.
Anne wore hiking boots, canvas work pants, and a plaid flannel shirt of reds and blues. She was dressed like a roofer but was far more feminine than her not-so-masculine husband. Her gray eyes looked out from behind oversize eyeglasses. The lenses were so big I worried birds would fly into them. She had shoulder-length chestnut hair with bangs that brushed the top of her glasses. Her hair color looked expensive and almost real.
Anne said, “Linnea’s curfew was 11:00, but we fell asleep in the bedroom, so we don’t know if she came back or not.”
“What did she do last night?”
“She went to the hockey game. We all did. It’s why most of Warroad is here.”
Warroad, Minnesota, lies six miles south of the Canadian border. Its citizens and a few others refer to it as Hockeytown USA, a deserved moniker considering the population is fewer than two thousand people, but no United States Olympic Hockey Team has won a gold medal without a player from Warroad on its roster. The tiny town has sent several players to the NHL and won four Minnesota State High School Hockey championships competing against Twin Cities–area powerhouses and the hockey-centric Duluth schools.
Anne said, “Linnea sat in the student section with her friends. After the game, they all walked to dinner at Burger Moe’s to celebrate the victory, and somewhere between the Xcel Center and the restaurant, Linnea disappeared.”
“So Linnea never made it to Burger Moe’s?” I said. Anne shook her head. “That’s not even a two-block walk. No one noticed her leaving the group?”
“We’ve spoken to Linnea’s friends,” said Roger. “They all said the same thing. She was there. Then she wasn’t. There were over eighteen thousand fans last night and they all poured out of the arena at once. And no one saw anything unusual. That’s why the police are treating Linnea as a runaway. That and she’s still seventeen.”
“But they’re treating Haley Housh as a missing person,” said Anne.
“Who’s Haley Housh?”
“Another senior from Warroad. She’s missing, too.”
Anne relayed the information as if it were happenstance, as if she were talking about the weather or what they’d eaten for lunch that day. “Were Linnea and Haley together?” I said.
“No,” said Anne. “Haley and Linnea aren’t close. They didn’t sit near each other at the game, and Haley’s group wasn’t headed to Burger Moe’s. All anyone knows is Haley disappeared from the crowd outside the stadium like Linnea did. But Haley’s eighteen, so they can’t consider her a runaway.”
Two girls from the tiny town of Warroad go missing at the same time. Only insular parents would believe that’s a coincidence. The police wouldn’t, and I sure as hell didn’t. “Do you have a picture of Linnea?”
Anne found a photo on her phone and handed it to me. If Anne had told me I was looking at a picture of her at seventeen, I would have believed her. The same chestnut hair. The same gray eyes. Only Linnea’s were playful instead of resigned. Maybe more than playful. Maybe a little wicked. A girl with Linnea’s looks would have an array of trouble offered to her. I turned toward Anne. “Do you think Linnea ran away?”
“No,” Anne said. “Linnea’s a happy girl. Popular in school. The only possible reason I can think she’d run away is to take off with her boyfriend. But he’s not going anywhere.”
“Why not?”
Anne looked at me with indifference or fatigue or perhaps numbness over her daughter’s disappearance. “Luca Lüdorf? He’s Warroad’s star player.”
“Have the police questioned Luca?”
“Yes,” said Roger. “We talked to him, too. He’s devastated. He has no idea where Linnea could be. Hasn’t heard a word from her.”
“What happens when you try her cell phone?”
“Straight to voice mail,” said Roger. “Texts don’t register as delivered. And the police have had no luck tracking it.”
There was a knock on the door. Roger got up to answer it.
I lowered my voice and looked at the cold eyes under the chestnut bangs. “How long have you lived in Warroad?”
Copyright © 2018 by Matt Goldman