“That’s a long time ago,” I say.
“Don’t feel like it,” says the driver. “Some people thought maybe it would bring the people of this city together. Everyone against the racist police, right? But my view is, it tore this town apart. It came right at the same time as the pandemic, so it was what you might call a perfect storm…”
We pull up in front of the Hilton, and I pay cash and give him a good tip. Before he leaves I say I need someone to drive me around the city and ask if he’s interested. We agree on an hourly rate, and he gives me his phone number and says I can call him when I’m ready.
There are only a few people in the hotel’s large lobby area and the restaurant. Behind the paper face mask the receptionist probably gives me a smile and I hand her my passport. When she notes that my reservation is for more than a week she informs me that the room will only be cleaned every fifth day. Then she gives me the key card to room 2406, almost at the top of the hotel, as requested.
“Nosebleed floor?” A man in a cowboy hat smiles at me as Ipress 24. He says it in that kind of cool and jokey but all the same friendly way that I’ve only ever noticed in Americans and people from the far north of Norway. I try to think of an equally cool comeback, but I’m from the south of Norway. So instead I work on trying to even out the pressure in my ears.
The bed is big and soft and I fall asleep at once.
When I wake up I need to go to the bathroom. As I don’t want to wake myself up too much I don’t switch on the light. I can just glimpse the toilet bowl in the dark as I start to sit down and find myself almost falling backward before my rear end lands safely on the ring of the plastic seat. I’d forgotten that toilets in the USA are built lower than in Norway. And at the same instant I recall how, when I was a kid, that made me think of America as a place where they were more fond of children. That, and all those TV channels with cartoons and series for kids, all those endless yards of shelves with sweets in Southdale, the amusement park Valleyfair, where my uncle always had some new attraction to show us when we arrived for our summer vacation. This was a wonderfully childlike country, I thought. In short: I loved America. And even though I gradually came to understand that it wasn’t perfect, I understood too that I would love it for the rest of my life.
It’s still dark outside when I next wake up. I get up, call the taxi driver’s number and ask him to meet me at Nicollet Avenue by South 10th Street, and then leave the hotel. Dawn is already breaking over the twin city of Saint Paul on the other bank of the Mississippi. On the sidewalk I pass a homeless man asleep with his body pressed up against the facade of a skyscraper bearing the logo of one of the USA’s biggest banks, as though he thinks there might be some warmth for him there. A police car is parked on Nicollet, but the windows are tinted and I can’t see whether anyone is sitting inside. After about fifteen minutes my taxi pulls up next to the sidewalk. I climb into the backseat.
“First let’s go to Jordan.”
The driver looks at me in the mirror. “The town?”
“No. The neighborhood.”
I can see he’s reluctant.
“Something wrong?”
“No, sir. But if you wanna score dope then you best get yourself another car.”
“No, that’s not it. I want to seethe projects.”
“In Jordan? They don’t exist no more, sir.”
“No?”
“Pulled down the last one five or six years ago.”
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
We glide through a city still sleeping. You have to study the details to find out what kind of neighborhood you’re passing through, whether it’s affluent or poor. If the lawns in front of the small houses are cut, if there’s garbage lying around, what makes of cars are parked along the street.
We drive by a 24/7 Winner Gas station. Four black youths watch as we go by.
“Is that where people score their dope now?” I ask.
The driver doesn’t reply. A few blocks later he stops.
“Here,” he says. “This is where they stood. The last high-rises in Jordan.”
I see a sign—“NO GUNS PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT”—and behind it a low, newish-looking building. It’s an elementary school. In the half dark two squirrels dart about in nervous, jerky sprints across the lawns, their big bushy tails following with a strange softness.
And what is the purpose of your visit, Mr. Holger Rudi?
The purpose is to try to get inside the head of a killer. To retrace the steps from that time back in 2016. It’s for a book. I’ve already made a start on it. The working title isThe Minneapolis Avenger.I expect the publisher will have an opinion on that, although they might be less sure exactly how to market it. Truecrime is the hottest genre in the book market right now. People just can’t get enough of stories about bloody and preferably spectacular murders—there’s the air of mystery, unexpected turns of events, villains and heroes on both sides of the law, and, if possible, an uncertain denouement that leaves plenty of room for wide-ranging conspiracy theories. My book will have all of these, apart from the last. The answers are all there, there’s no question about where the guilt lies. What remains is the business of trying to understand how and why what happeneddidhappen. And to achieve this I need to get inside not only the killer’s head but the heads of all the players in this story. Use everything I already know plus a bit of my own imagination to see the world, see the sites where it all happened, see it all played out through their eyes. Find the human among all the inhuman. Force the reader—and myself—to ask the question: could that have been me?
I’m giving these field studies eight days, so I don’t have all that much time. I need to get going. And that means beginning with the guy who was where I am now, also at dawn, on that morning six years ago.
I close my eyes and can see the towers rising from the ground. Blocking out the sky. There, on the sixth floor, is an open window. I fly up there. Right now I’m him. I look out. I can see in all directions. Height means overview.
2
