Thief River Falls

29

Daylight was waning as Lisa slipped back through her old neighborhood. She made it to her house unseen, and when she was inside, she called for Purdue. He didn’t answer, so she took the steps down to the cold, cluttered basement. She navigated through the maze of garage sale junk they kept down there to the tiny crawl space. Her heart felt a flood of relief when she spotted his face poking out from behind Madeleine’s old Christmas decorations.

Purdue snaked from his hiding place and dropped to the floor. He wrapped up Lisa in a hug.

“You were gone so long!” he said. “I was afraid you were never coming back.”

Lisa mussed his blond hair. “Don’t worry about that. Wherever you are, I’ll always come back for you. Why were you in the crawl space? Did someone come to the house?”

“I heard something outside, and I got scared. I didn’t know who it was, so I figured I would hide.”

“That was the right thing to do,” Lisa told him.

The two of them went back upstairs to the main part of the house. Purdue went from window to window to peer outside as if he were a spy, and Lisa went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. The kitchen was a match for Fiona’s house, without the marble countertops and stainless steel appliances. There were knives on the counter, just like there had been at Fiona’s, but none of the knives was missing. Lisa took Madeleine’s butcher knife out of the block and thought about all the times she’d seen her mother cutting up chicken pieces with it and singing, “Alouette, je te plumerai” while she did.

When the water was boiling, Lisa brought her tea into the living room. She took a seat on the sofa and patted the cushion for Purdue to join her. The boy galloped over and sat with his legs underneath him. It felt right to have a boy running around the house. Her eyes drifted to the mantel of their fireplace, which was where they kept their family photographs, just as Fiona had. Except Lisa had turned all the photographs facedown when she came back into the house. Seeing them was still too painful.

“I explored the house while you were gone,” Purdue told her. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Sure. It’s fine.”

He pointed at a copy of Thief River Falls on the coffee table. “I found that book in the bedroom upstairs. Is that yours? Is that the one about the boy who’s lost, like me?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

“Can I read it?”

Lisa shook her head. “Not yet. It’s a little old for you.”

Purdue fidgeted on the sofa. He looked at the book and then down at his lap. “Well, I started reading it anyway. I read the first part, about the boy in the ground who’s talking to his mom.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Lisa said.

“Does the boy die?”

“No. I told you he gets rescued.”

“What about his mom? She’s dead, right? Like mine. You didn’t say that in the book, but I figured that was it.”

“Purdue, this is not a book for kids. It’s a book for adults.”

“What happens? Who rescues the boy?”

Lisa shook her head and didn’t answer. She wanted to get away from the book; she didn’t want to dive inside the plot of Thief River Falls. Not now. Then she heard an echo of Willow Taylor’s voice in her head, and she realized she didn’t have a choice. The more she tried to get away from the book, the more she kept finding herself in the middle of it.

Do you ever worry about someone bringing your books to life?

“Listen to me, Purdue, that first scene takes place in a cemetery,” Lisa said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“Like what?”

She tried to decide how much to tell him. To get answers without scaring him any more than he was. “I talked to a girl who was in one of the town cemeteries two nights ago. That was the night you came to my house. She says she saw someone in the cemetery, and she thought they were burying a body. I was just wondering if that stirs any memories for you. You know, like the boy in my book who was put underground.”

His brow furrowed. “No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

Lisa didn’t sense any deception from him this time. Purdue didn’t remember what had happened to him, and if he’d been injured — if someone had struck him — then the trauma had blacked out his memories. So maybe he’d been at the cemetery and maybe not. There was no way for her to be sure.

“I’m going to say a few names to you,” Lisa said, “and I want you to tell me if you’ve ever heard any of these names before.”

“Okay.”

“Fiona Farrell.”

Purdue shook his head. “No.”

“What about Nick Loudon?”

“No.”

She hesitated. “Denis Farrell. What about him?”

“I don’t know any of them. Who are they? What do they have to do with me?”

“Well, I don’t think they had anything to do with you. Not until two nights ago. After that, I’m not so sure.” Lisa reached into her pocket for the photographs she’d taken from Fiona’s house. She took the wedding picture of Fiona and Nick, and she extended it to Purdue with her thumb covering Nick Loudon’s face.

“How about this woman?” she asked. “Do you know her? Have you ever seen her before?”

“No.”

Lisa moved her thumb away from the photograph. “What about him?”

Purdue’s face changed instantly. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he couldn’t bear to stare at the man, as if his picture brought back memories of blood and death. Lisa knew. She’d suspected all along, ever since she’d heard about the murder of Fiona Farrell, ever since she’d found out that Nick Loudon was missing.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” she asked softly. “The man by the river? The one who looked like a football player?”

Purdue nodded.

“He’s the one they tortured and killed?” Lisa asked.

The boy nodded again. He still hadn’t said anything.

Lisa had one more photograph in her hand. It weighed hardly anything, and yet it felt heavy. “There’s one more picture I want to show you, Purdue. I think this one may be hard for you to see, but I need you to look at it, and I need you to tell me if you know this man. If he was there by the water that night.”

Still the boy said nothing.

She took the picture, and she covered up Gillian’s face so that only her husband was visible.

Denis Farrell.

The county attorney of Pennington County.

She held the picture in front of Purdue’s face and watched terror crease his features, washing away his innocence, bringing back that night as if he were in the midst of it again. As if they were holding him as he struggled to escape.

He knew the face. He knew Denis Farrell.

“Purdue?” Lisa murmured as the silence stretched out. “You have to say it out loud.”

He pointed at the photograph with a trembling finger.

“Kill the boy.”