Spilled Blood

2

The main street of Barron looked like Hollywood’s idea of a small town. Chris drove by nostalgic storefronts, like the pharmacy with an oversized mortar and pestle stamped on its sign, the hardware store advertising lawnmower repair, and the Swedish bakery displaying racks of fresh kringle cookies. The brick walls were bright and clean; the paint on the stores was fresh. He saw none of the economic decay he expected. In a time when rural areas were bleeding young people into the cities, the streets of Barron bustled. The smell of money was everywhere, and most rural towns hadn’t known that smell in a long time.

It was easy to see why, to the people of Barron, the ten-year-old biotechnology company on their borders felt like a godsend. Their prosperity had a name: Mondamin Research.

Ten miles south along the highway, in the neighboring town of St. Croix, families had a darker view of Mondamin. They blamed the company’s pesticides for the deaths of their children. They’d sued to prove it, but the litigation had been thrown out of court, and in the year that followed, a wave of violence and vandalism had spread into the streets. Teenagers in St. Croix attacked the town of Barron. Teenagers in Barron struck back. The two towns, which were near enough that most people who lived in St. Croix worked or went to school in the larger town of Barron, became enemies.

Now it was worse, because a line had been crossed. Blood had been spilled.

Even among the primped store windows and flower baskets hanging from the street lights, Chris saw evidence of the feud. A concrete statue of a founding pioneer in the street’s roundabout had been beheaded. The doorway of a clothing shop showed the black scars of a recent fire. He saw tiny starbursts popped through the glass of second-floor windows. Bullet holes.

The bullets had targeted one building in particular. The white lettering stenciled on the pockmarked windows above the street advertised the Grohman Women’s Resource Center. The Center was housed in Barron, but the woman who ran the organization lived in St. Croix, where her parents had lived, where her grandparents had lived, where her great-grandparents had settled after emigrating from Uppsala. Chris knew her. She had a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota. She had a freckle in the swell of her left breast that he had kissed a thousand times.

Hannah, Hannah, what are you doing here?

Chris understood. Hannah was where she always wanted to be. In the center of the storm.

He drove two more blocks to the end of Barron’s main street and found the county courthouse. Like a cathedral out of the Middle Ages, it looked oddly elaborate for its rural surroundings. It was a majestic three-story building with brick gables and a massive central clock tower. He parked and climbed terraced steps leading up from the street. Outside the oak doors, he turned to overlook the town from above. The river flowed immediately behind the downtown shops, and he saw a pedestrian bridge stretching across the water to a swath of forested parkland on the far shore. Away from the main street, he saw a neatly organized grid of houses built between the water and the rocky bluff that bordered the river valley.

From up here, Barron looked peaceful. Not violent at all.

Chris went inside the courthouse, which glistened with lacquered oak. He checked the directory. The sheriff’s office and the facilities for the county jail were buried in the basement. He headed downstairs, where the surroundings were institutional, not ornamental. Security was modest. It wasn’t a place that housed hardened criminals.

He told the uniformed officer at the desk: ‘I’d like to see Olivia Hawk. I’m her lawyer.’

Her father. Her lawyer. It didn’t matter which hat he was wearing. The policeman, like everyone else in town, knew who he was.

Chris gave up his driver’s license; he had his picture taken; he walked through a metal detector. The officer led him through a steel door and into a conference room that wasn’t much bigger than a phone booth. Chris sat down on one side of a narrow conference table, and the policeman left him alone. The door lock clicked as the officer left. He waited.

Two minutes later, the door opened again.

Chris told himself he was prepared, but he wasn’t. He’d steeled himself for this moment, but his heart raced, and his stomach climbed into his throat, and his eyes stung with tears. Olivia walked in, her long brown hair dirty and tangled, her wrists bound in handcuffs as if she were praying. She wasn’t in prison gear; she wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and worn jeans. He’d seen her at Thanksgiving, but even in that time, she’d changed. She was growing into her adolescent features. She was more graceful. She was taller. She’d always joked about getting her looks from him, not Hannah, and if anything, she looked more like him than she ever had before. His sharp nose and high cheekbones. His mouth. His expressions.

For all that, he was afraid of what he saw in her face. Her brown eyes were as deep and unrevealing as a black hole, and he thought he could search in them for days without finding her. The daughter he knew, the girl he remembered, could never fire a gun at another human being, but this was someone else. A woman. A stranger.

The policeman undid the handcuffs, and Olivia rubbed her chapped wrists and shook out her fingers. The officer left, and the lock clicked on the door, and it was just the two of them. Father and daughter. Silently, he pushed his chair back and came around the table to embrace her. She hugged him back fiercely, and he clung to her, stroking her hair. When he helped her into a chair, she stole a look at him and then hooded her eyes, her hair tumbling across her face. The shame in her beet-red cheeks was like a ten-year-old who’d broken a figurine she wasn’t supposed to touch. That was the Olivia he knew.

‘Guess I really screwed up,’ she said.

He sat next to her and stroked her face with the back of his hand. ‘First things first. Are you okay?’

Olivia squirmed in the chair. ‘I’ve had the Hershey’s for two days. Yuck.’

Chris smiled. ‘I’ll make sure they give you something.’

‘Other than that, I guess I’m okay.’

‘Good.’

‘Jail sucks.’

‘Yeah, it does.’

His daughter pushed her hair back behind her ears. ‘So how was Matt’s?’

‘What?’

‘We texted on Saturday, remember? Didn’t you go to Matt’s Bar that night?’

‘I did.’

‘I could really go for a Juicy Lucy,’ she said.

He didn’t say anything. Olivia was in jail, and she was talking about cheeseburgers like she needed a new Facebook status. He wondered if she didn’t realize the gravity of her situation or if she was simply stalling. He also thought: She texted me on Saturday. That was the day after the murder.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You texted me on Saturday to ask what I was doing that night. Ashlynn was dead. You’d just been through one of the worst nights of your life, and you didn’t say a word about it, Olivia. Why not?’

Her lower lip quivered. ‘I don’t know, Dad. I couldn’t believe it was real, you know?’

‘Your mother says you wouldn’t tell her what happened.’

‘I couldn’t. I can’t deal with Mom right now. It’s easier to talk to you.’

Or maybe it was easier to lie to him. He put that thought out of his mind.

‘Okay,’ he told her softly. ‘Here I am. Let’s talk.’

Olivia sat frozen. Words didn’t pour out of her.

‘I don’t know what to say, Dad,’ she told him finally. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

He was afraid she would give him an excuse. An apology. A plea for forgiveness. It was an accident. The gun went off. I didn’t mean it. He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t.

‘Just tell me what you know,’ he said.

‘What’s the point? No one will believe me.’

‘Not true. I’ll believe you.’

Olivia swung her head, and he saw those dark, pretty, mysterious eyes again. ‘I’m not so sure, Dad. You’re already scared of what I’m going to say, aren’t you? That’s why you haven’t asked me the Big One. Whether I did it. Whether I killed her. You think I’m going to say yes.’

She was good. Chris had sat across the table from dealmakers who spent their whole careers perfecting their skills at psychological warfare. These were lawyers who conducted opposition research like politicians, knowing what buttons to push, figuring out every weakness they could exploit. He’d built a suit of armor for those confrontations that had never failed him, but against this teenager, he was defenseless. She saw through him as if his heart were opened up on an autopsy table.

‘Lawyers don’t usually ask their clients whether they did it,’ he said. ‘That’s not how it works.’

‘Because you assume I’m guilty, right?’

‘No, because I assume you’re innocent.’

His daughter pushed back her chair, stood up, and folded her arms. ‘If I did it, what difference does any of this make? They should just lock me up.’

‘It makes a big difference,’ Chris explained. ‘You’re sixteen years old. You were drinking. You were mourning the loss of your best friend. There are a lot of mitigating circumstances. If a jury understands what was really going on, they may conclude you weren’t responsible for your actions.’

‘If I killed her, I’m responsible.’

‘Not necessarily. Not legally.’

Olivia stared at the ceiling, as if to hide that her eyes were filling with tears. She shook her head in despair. ‘See? You think I’m guilty, too.’

‘I didn’t say that at all.’

She looked at him, bereft. ‘Don’t you get it? I don’t want a lawyer to play games for me. I want a father who cares whether I did this.’

‘I do care, Olivia. I just want you to understand that nothing you tell me will change how I feel about you. No matter what you say, I’m here to help you.’

‘Ask me,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Ask me,’ she repeated, her voice breaking. ‘Please.’

She needed to tell him, and he realized that he needed to hear it. He got up and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Olivia, did you do this? Did you shoot that girl?’

She sucked in a long, loud breath. ‘No.’

As if she assumed he would doubt her, as if she thought he would wonder in his heart if she were lying, she wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve and repeated herself calmly, so he could hear every word. ‘I didn’t do this. I swear to you. I didn’t. You have to believe me.’

She cried again and threw her arms around his waist. It didn’t matter what he knew or didn’t know about the girl in his arms. He knew one thing. She was his daughter, and she was innocent.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Chris had his briefcase open and a fresh yellow pad in front of him. He’d given Olivia a tissue and asked the police officer outside for a bottle of water, which she sipped in small swallows. She’d composed herself, and when she spoke, he was reminded of how intelligent and passionate she was. Physically, she looked like him. Emotionally, she was Hannah’s child.

‘Tanya and I met at the ghost town on Friday night,’ she said. ‘She drove from her dad’s house in Barron, I drove from St. Croix. The ruins are west of both towns, maybe five miles out. It must have been about ten o’clock when we got there.’

‘Hannah says you used to go there with Kimberly.’

Olivia stared at the wall as if seeing a ghost. Her grief over her friend was near the surface. ‘Yeah.’

‘I know it was the anniversary of her death,’ he said.

‘I know you two were close.’

‘I’m not sure you really do, Dad.’

‘Okay, tell me.’

A tiny frown sprouted on her face. ‘Look, it sucked when Mom and I left three years ago. Right? Sucked big-time.’

‘I’m sorry. It sucked for me, too, kiddo.’

‘I was pissed at Mom. I was pissed at you. I hated this place. I wanted to get out. If I hadn’t met Kimberly, I don’t know what I would have done. I mean, I was thinking some bad things, Dad. She saved me.’

He hated to think of his daughter feeling like an outcast. ‘I’m glad you found her,’ he said. He added softly, ‘Had she already been diagnosed with leukemia?’

Olivia struggled with her emotions. ‘Yeah, she was going through chemo. She was sure she was going to beat it, even though three other kids had already died. It was really awful, Dad.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Kimberly sort of became my mission, you know? Mom says I have to have missions, like her.’

He smiled again. ‘I know.’

‘Anyway, the first few months, when she still had the energy to go out, we did a lot of exploring. The ghost town was one of her favorite places. She loved how creepy it was, all the ruined buildings. She said she heard the echoes of the people who lived there, especially at night. That’s what she called them. Echoes. I think that made her feel better, you know? She liked the idea of ghosts and hauntings and stuff like that.’

‘Okay.’

‘Tanya hung out with us, too,’ Olivia went on. ‘Mostly, it was me and Kimberly, because we lived so close to each other, but Tanya was over at the church a lot in those days. Her dad was filing the lawsuit, and Kimberly’s dad was one of the plaintiffs. Tanya hooked up with the two of us.’

Chris waited.

‘When Kimberly died—’ Olivia continued, but then she stopped. She wiped her eyes again. ‘I go back there sometimes. Like maybe I’ll hear the echoes, you know?’

Chris covered her hand with his own. ‘I get it.’

‘It’s stupid.’

‘No, it’s not.’ He understood her state of mind that night, but he was afraid that a jury might think a girl in that fragile state of mind would take revenge when it was offered to her. ‘How about we go back to Friday night, okay? What did you do?’

‘Not much,’ she said. ‘We dug inside a couple of the old buildings. We walked along the railroad tracks.’

‘Did you see anyone else?’

‘No, it was just the two of us.’

‘The police found beer bottles. Were you drinking?’

‘Yeah, Tanya snuck some Miller Lite out of her dad’s house.’

‘How much?’’

‘A six-pack.’

‘Did you finish it?’

‘Yeah. I had four. Tanya had two. I was pretty buzzed. I don’t do it a lot, but I was really upset.’

‘I understand.’

‘Ashlynn showed up around midnight. We hid when we heard another car, because if it’s Barron boys, you don’t want to be around, you know?’ A hardness came over her face. ‘But it was her. That blond bitch.’

Chris stopped writing and put down his pen. ‘Olivia, listen to me. Ashlynn is dead. She was a teenager like you, with people who loved her. She had her whole life ahead of her, and someone stole it away. It diminishes you to talk about her that way.’

Olivia looked upset with herself. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘What was it about Ashlynn? Why did you hate her?’

She pulled a messy strand of her chestnut hair through her lips. ‘Mondamin,’ she said. ‘What else? St. Croix is dying, and no one will do anything.’

‘Mondamin is run by her father. Why did you blame Ashlynn for that?’

‘She was there.’

‘Is that all it was?’

‘Look, Dad, I’m not proud of it. I was drunk. I was stupid. I just wanted to scare her.’

He waited for her to say more, but she looked down and fiddled with the buttons on her shirt. He could feel her withdrawing. There was a disconnect between what she said and what he could see in her face. For the first time, he felt as if she were hiding something from him.

Lying.

‘They tell me you had a gun,’ he said, changing the subject.

She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘One of the boys in St. Croix gave it to me. I’ve had it for months.’

‘Why?’

Olivia gave him an exasperated look. ‘You don’t know what it’s like around here, Dad. I mean, yeah, the kids in St. Croix did some stupid things, but the Barron boys ratcheted up the violence. They started to treat the feud like it’s a gang war. I wanted protection.’

‘Have you ever fired the gun?’ he asked.

‘A couple of times out in a field.’

‘Did you fire it on Friday?’

She bit her lip and nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I was showing off. I fired into the tree.’

‘The police say you put a bullet in the gun in order to play Russian roulette with Ashlynn. You were terrorizing her.’

‘I guess so. It all happened fast. I was yelling at Ashlynn, and I fired, and yeah, I started messing around like in Russian roulette. Tanya freaked and ran.’

‘What did you do next? After you and Ashlynn were alone?’

‘Nothing. I swear.’

‘Did you point the gun at her head?’

‘Yeah, I did, but—’

‘Did you pull the trigger?’

‘No.’

‘Did you play the game, Olivia? Did the gun go off?’

‘I didn’t pull the trigger,’ she insisted, her voice rising. ‘I didn’t.’

Chris let his daughter sit in silence, her chest rising and falling. He scribbled notes on his yellow pad, but he was really thinking about Olivia on a witness stand and how her story would survive on cross-examination.

Answer: Not well.

‘Okay,’ he asked softly, ‘what did you do next?’

‘I dropped the gun. I left. I was really upset with myself. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I just left.’

‘You didn’t take the gun with you?’

‘No, I never wanted to touch a gun ever again. I mean, I almost did it, Dad. I was this close. That was too scary.’

‘What about Ashlynn? What did she do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Did you talk to her?’

‘No, we didn’t talk to each other. I left her there. That was it.’

Chris watched the darting motions of her eyes. She was lying to him again. There was something more going on, something that Olivia was determined to hide. If it came to that, a jury was likely to think she was hiding the fact that she had fired the revolver.

‘Okay,’ he said.

He deposited his yellow pad in his briefcase and closed it. Olivia stared at him with a nervous half-smile, and he knew what anyone in the world would think, studying her expression.

She looked guilty.

‘So what now?’ she asked.

‘There’s a detention hearing in the morning, and I expect you’ll be released. I’m going to talk to the county attorney about the investigation and the charges. They’re moving fast. We need to slow them down.’

‘I didn’t pull the trigger, Dad,’ she repeated. ‘I didn’t kill her.’

‘You said that already. I know you didn’t.’ He thought of a question he hadn’t asked. An important one. ‘Do you know who did kill Ashlynn? Do you know what happened to her?’

‘I left, Dad. When I left, she was alive.’

‘That’s not what I asked you.’

His daughter met his eyes, and he wished he could believe whatever she said. ‘No, I don’t know what happened.’

‘Okay.’ Chris got up and kissed her on the head. ‘Take care, and don’t be scared. I’ll be back in the morning.’

He turned to flag the guard, but Olivia stopped him by grabbing his sleeve. ‘Have you seen Mom yet?’

‘Not yet. I’ll stop over there tonight.’

‘There’s something you should know,’ she said.

‘What?’

Olivia hesitated. ‘I told her she should tell you, but she didn’t.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Mom’s got it.’

He stared at her, and he didn’t understand. Or maybe the truth was that he simply didn’t want to understand. He stood in frozen silence, as if he could postpone for ever the next words out of his daughter’s mouth. She felt it, too, and she kept his arm tightly in her grip.

‘Mom’s got cancer,’ she said.