Spilled Blood

15

It was four in the morning.

Hannah had drifted to sleep, but Chris stared into space, unable to close his eyes. The hospital was dark and hushed around them. Nurses talked in the hallway in low voices while the patients slept. He sipped bad coffee from a foam cup and listened to the ticking of the wall clock. His body hurt, and he needed a shower.

Outside the visitor’s lounge, the elevator dinged. When the doors slid open, Michael Altman stepped out, looking neat and alert despite the late hour. The county attorney had his raincoat slung over his arm, and he carried a large cardboard box. His fedora was low on his forehead. He spotted Chris on the sofa and nodded to him.

Chris detached himself from Hannah, who had slouched against his shoulder. He met Altman in the hallway and pulled the lounge door shut behind him.

Altman spoke in a low voice. ‘How is Olivia?’

‘Stable. She’s sleeping now.’

‘What’s the extent of her injuries?’

Chris took a slow breath to calm himself. ‘She’s in better shape than I feared. She’s pretty beaten up, but there are no broken bones and no concussion or head injury.’

‘I hate to ask, but—’

‘If they were planning to rape her, they didn’t get that far.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Altman told him, ‘and I’m very sorry about all of this. What about Johan Magnus?’

‘He has a couple bruised ribs, and he’s got a black eye. He’ll need dental work; two molars are loose. He’s a tough kid, though. He wanted to go home, but the doctors insisted he stay. They’re running tests to make sure there are no internal injuries.’

Altman shook his head. ‘This is infuriating. This violence has to stop.’ Chris said nothing, and the county attorney read his expression with sharp eyes. ‘I hope you know better than to get involved in this yourself, Mr. Hawk. I don’t need any more vigilantes.’

‘This didn’t happen to your daughter,’ Chris said.

‘I understand, but you need to let me and the police do our jobs.’

Chris was too tired to hide his sarcasm. ‘How’s that been working out for you lately?’

‘We will catch them, Mr. Hawk,’ Altman insisted. ‘The train car is a trove of evidence. The boys left in a hurry. We’ll get DNA and fingerprints.’

‘Start with Kirk Watson.’

Altman looked uncomfortable. ‘We did.’

‘And?’

‘Kirk and his brother have a house on the river south of town. It’s not far from the railway yard. He says he was home all evening, and three girls vouched for his whereabouts.’

‘They’re lying.’

‘Very likely. We’ll try to break his alibi. If we can identify any of the other boys who were involved, we can turn them on each other. It will happen, but it will take time.’

Time meant days. Weeks. Months. He was already cynical about law enforcement in Barron. He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling his exhaustion.

‘You need sleep,’ Altman told him.

‘Someday.’ He eyed the box that Altman was carrying. ‘What’s that?’

The county attorney bent at the knees and laid the box on the floor. ‘I promised you copies of the documentation we’ve gathered in the investigation so far.’

‘You’re efficient.’

‘I told you, I don’t play games. We can arrange for you to review the physical evidence, too.’ He added, ‘As painful as it is, I hope you realize this incident doesn’t change Olivia’s legal situation. I’ll still be proceeding to a grand jury indictment.’

‘I assumed you would.’

‘It may take more time, however.’

‘I appreciate it.’

Chris thought about asking Altman about the autopsy results. The abortion. The triangle involving Olivia, Johan, and Ashlynn. He assumed Altman knew about all of those things, but he didn’t want to risk opening a window that was closed.

‘Tanya Swenson told me that Ashlynn dated Kirk last year,’ Chris said. ‘Florian denied it. Do you know if it’s true?’

‘I don’t, but what difference does that make?’

‘Kirk’s a bad actor. If Ashlynn dumped him, he had a motive to kill her.’

‘There’s no evidence he was at the scene.’

‘Not yet,’ Chris said. ‘Did you review the evidence gathered from Ashlynn’s Mustang?’

Altman nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I saw the car when I went to see Florian at Mondamin. Something bothered me when I looked inside. I figured out what it was.’

‘What?’

‘Mud,’ Chris said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘There was mud on the driver’s seat.’

‘So? It’s been raining around here for weeks.’

‘Yes, but Tanya says that Olivia pushed Ashlynn in the park that night. Ashlynn fell. She got mud on her clothes.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘Maybe Ashlynn tracked that mud back to her car. If Olivia left Ashlynn in the ghost town – alive – what would Ashlynn do? She’d go back to her car and wait. Then someone else arrived. Someone who killed her.’

‘That’s an interesting theory, Mr. Hawk, but Ashlynn’s body was found in the park, exactly where Olivia confronted her. If she went back to her car, why wasn’t she killed there? The more likely explanation is that the dirt on the seat of the Mustang was days old.’

Chris frowned. Altman was right. He couldn’t explain why Ashlynn would have gone back to the park. Even so, the mud in the car raised a doubt, and doubt to a lawyer was like a dripping faucet. Eventually, drip by drip, it made a flood.

Altman put a hand on Chris’s shoulder. ‘Get some sleep, Mr. Hawk.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘I meant what I said. I’m sorry about Olivia, and I will do everything I can to catch the boys who did this.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I also meant the part about staying out of it. Revenge doesn’t give you a free pass for violence.’

‘Message received,’ Chris said.

Altman returned to the elevator, leaving Chris alone in the hospital hallway. He watched the doors close. With Altman gone, he left the evidence box on the floor and wandered toward the first patient room beyond the nurse’s station. From the doorway, he watched Olivia in bed, asleep, at peace. Her face was angelic. She bore no scars on the outside. It was her head and heart that worried him.

He needed fresh air. He returned to the hallway and hoisted the evidence box on his shoulder. Inside the elevator, he sagged against the rear wall and closed his eyes, and for a second or two, he slept. The opening of the doors on the first floor jarred him. He shook himself and exited into the hospital lobby. Outside, the night was cool, and the rain had stopped, but the air was damp. His Lexus was parked at the back of the lot, facing a grassy field. He carried the box to his car, popped the trunk, and deposited it inside. Tomorrow, he would review what the police had found, looking for more evidence. More doubt. Drip by drip.

Chris slammed the trunk. He saw no cars on the streets, and there were no lights in the nearby houses. The town of Barron was quiet. Even so, he felt as if a voyeur were watching him. It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation. He studied the parked cars in the hospital lot, but he was alone. He looked across the street to the dark field, which was buried in shadows. If anyone was there, they were invisible.

He was about to return to the hospital when he noticed something under the windshield wiper of his car. It hadn’t been there when he parked. He assumed it was the kind of annoying advertisement that sandwich shops placed on cars on the Minneapolis streets, but when he plucked it from the windshield he saw that it was an envelope. Nothing was written on the outside. It wasn’t sealed.

Chris slid a single sheet of paper from the interior, and when he unfolded it, he looked up sharply, staring into the empty darkness around him. He hadn’t been wrong. He wasn’t alone.

He read the black printed letters on the page.

TO THE ATTENTION OF

MR. CHRISTOPHER HAWK

YOU HAVE SUFFERED TONIGHT

YOU ARE IN A WORLD

WHOSE EVIL IS BEYOND SALVATION

YOU ARE IN A WORLD

THAT WILL SOON BE DESTROYED

LET THIS BE YOUR WARNING

THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE

IF YOU STAY YOU WILL DIE

MY NAME IS

AQUARIUS