‘No, Ashlynn was out of school for most of the week. She wasn’t in classes after Tuesday.’
‘She’d been gone for three days? Do you know why?’
‘Well, she gave me a note from her mother saying that she was volunteering on a church project in Nebraska, but to be honest—’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘To tell you the truth, I thought the note was forged.’
‘Did you talk to Florian or Julia?’
‘No. In retrospect I wish I had, but I didn’t want Ashlynn to feel that I didn’t trust her. For all I knew, the story was perfectly legitimate.’
Ashlynn told Olivia she’d been driving for hours, and she arrived in the ghost town from the south, which was the route she would have taken back from Nebraska. So maybe it was true.
Or maybe, like Olivia, Ashlynn was keeping secrets.
‘Do you know—’ he began, but he couldn’t finish his question.
Footsteps boomed on the cafeteria floor. A gangly teenager sprinted toward them and skidded to a stop, almost falling. He had a pile of schoolbooks under his arm, and two of them spilled to the ground. The boy struggled to catch his breath. The cafeteria guard, seeing the commotion, jogged in their direction.
Maxine Valma stood up. ‘David,’ she said to the boy. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
The teenager gestured toward the rear of the school. ‘There’s trouble outside.’
Thirty students gathered in a mean circle in the mud of the football field.
As Chris and the principal neared the crowd, with two security guards beside them, he heard shouted expletives hurled between teenage boys. Pushing and shoving erupted, throwing several boys to the wet ground. Others began throwing wild punches. A handful of girls watched in twos and threes from around the lawn. Some screamed encouragement, and others chewed their nails and stared nervously at the principal as she came closer.
One girl stood off by herself. She had a round face, with a mess of red curls on her head. She watched the fight from the shelter of a large oak tree, and she eyed the streets of Barron behind her, as if weighing whether she should run.
Through the tumult of bodies, they could see inside the circle, where two teenage boys confronted each other in a mess of blood and fists. The one with long hair tied in a ponytail was a stranger to Chris, but he recognized the other. It was Johan Magnus, the son of the minister in St. Croix, the boy he’d met at the motel. Johan, whose sister Kimberly was part of the cancer cluster and Olivia’s best friend.
He heard Maxine Valma mutter in dismay, spotting the other boy in the fight. ‘Kirk Watson.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘A Barron boy,’ she snapped. ‘One of the worst.’
They descended on the feuding pack, and Valma shouted at the students with a crisp air of anger and authority. ‘Stop this!’
Seeing them, several boys broke from the circle and escaped toward the school building. Many of the girls joined them. The others were still caught up in the fight, wrestling and exchanging blows. One by one, Chris and the security guards waded between the boys, shoving them aside and re-establishing a safe ground. The violence quieted, until only Kirk Watson and Johan Magnus were still entangled. Blood trickled from Johan’s nose. Kirk had a burgundy welt on his cheek bone. Their clothes and faces were black with dirt.
Chris took Kirk, and the larger of the security guards took Johan, and together they grabbed each boy by the shoulders and yanked them apart. Kirk shrugged off Chris’s grip and bolted toward Johan, but as he did, the other guard stepped in front of Johan and fired a blast of pepper spray toward Kirk’s face. The guard’s aim was bad, but even as Kirk twisted from the path of the spray, some of the fog seared his cheek and neck. He screamed and jerked backward, tumbling into Chris and taking them both to the ground.
Kirk clawed at his burning skin. His elbow landed hard on Chris’s chin, dizzying him and knocking his teeth together. The older boy was heavy on top of Chris’s body, and he fought unsuccessfully to dislodge him. Kirk’s breath was sour as he gagged from the pepper spray, and he stank of cigarettes. He swung, hammering the side of Chris’s skull and blinding him with an electric jolt of pain. As the guards closed in, Kirk blinked at Chris through tearing, bloodshot eyes.
‘D’you get my message, fucker?’ he hissed.
Chris knew what message Kirk meant. It had been scrawled on the wall of his motel room.
The guards laid their hands on Kirk’s shoulders and dragged him off Chris, but with the strength of a bear, Kirk kicked free of the guards. Before anyone could hold him, he broke through the line-up of teenagers. No one reacted; no one chased him. He sprinted toward a black pick-up parked on the border of the athletic field. When he was safely inside, the engine growled, and he sped away.
Chris stood up slowly. The ringing in his ears was as loud as a symphony. His neck and jaw felt stiff. His new dress shirt and pants were wet and torn. He felt someone put an arm around his waist and realized it was Maxine Valma.
‘Are you all right?’ the principal asked.
‘I’ve been better,’ Chris admitted, tasting blood in his mouth.
Valma snapped her fingers at the minister’s son, who stood on the edge of the circle with his hands in his jean pockets. Despite the smears of blood on his face and the mud in his blond hair, he looked in better shape than Chris.
‘Johan,’ Valma ordered him. ‘Get over here.’
The boy inched closer. He began to make excuses, but the principal silenced him.
‘Quiet! Listen to me. I’m very disappointed in you. You’re the one person in this school who has tried to stop the violence around here. And now I find you brawling with Kirk Watson? What were you thinking?’
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Johan insisted.
‘Then what is it?’
‘I saw Kirk’s brother Lenny going outside with Tanya Swenson. I didn’t like it. I followed them, and I saw Kirk out here waiting for her.’
Valma took a long breath. ‘I see.’
‘Kirk and I got into it, and everyone else started piling in.’
‘Where is Lenny?’ she asked.
‘He bailed and ran when everything started.’
‘All right. Go back to my office, Johan. We need to share this with the police.’ Her soft voice turned sharp again. ‘The rest of you, I want you in the gymnasium with the guards. Right now. No talking. No fighting. You sit there and stare at your feet, is that understood? We’re all going to have a chat with you and your parents.’
The crowd of teenagers shuffled toward the school building. Chris remembered the girl who had stood off by herself near the trees, and he realized she wasn’t part of the group returning to the school. When he looked in the direction where he’d first seen her, he saw the girl running toward the residential neighborhood.
‘Who is that?’ he asked Valma.
The principal frowned. ‘It’s Tanya Swenson.’ She shouted after the girl. ‘Tanya! Come back!’
Tanya stopped long enough to look back over her shoulder, but then she turned and ran even faster, losing herself among the streets of Barron.
8
Chris found Tanya on a side-street twelve blocks from the school. She sat on the top step of a box-like yellow house, with her fleshy forearms wrapped around her knees and iPod earphones shoved in her ears. When she saw his car stop, she scrambled to her feet with her red curls bouncing, and he was afraid she would run. He got out quickly and held up his hands.
‘Tanya, it’s okay. I want to help.’
The girl regarded him suspiciously. She unplugged the headphones and shoved them in her pocket.
‘I’m Olivia’s father,’ he added.
‘I know who you are.’
Chris studied the street in both directions. They were alone. The mature trees hung their bare branches over the neighborhood. It was a gray day. ‘Ms. Valma was concerned about you,’ he said. ‘Johan told us what happened.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that.’
‘You’re lucky he was around,’ Chris said.
‘Yeah. I know. I just don’t want to make this into a big thing.’
‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’
‘I’m fine.’
He walked up the sidewalk to join her. The house where Tanya sat was old and small, a relic from the 1950s. The curtains on the windows were drawn, the driveway empty. ‘Do you live here?’ he asked her.
‘No.’
‘Whose house is it?’
‘I don’t know. I was tired of running.’
Chris gestured at the steps. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘Whatever.’
He sat three steps below her and rubbed his jaw, which moved stiffly as if he were the Tin Man in need of an oil can. Even without rain, the painted step felt damp. The porch smelled of wood rot and of the cloud of Tanya’s sugar-sweet perfume. He smiled at her, and they sat in silence. She was a pretty girl, with a fresh, pink face. Her voice had a sweet lilt, but she spoke softly. She was like a timid cat. He imagined her with Olivia, and the contrast was striking. His daughter was outspoken; Tanya was a wallflower.
He thought about what he knew of this girl. Like Olivia, she’d lost a parent to divorce and a friend to cancer. She’d been rejected by her friends in Barron. Now she was the center of attention from police and attorneys in a murder investigation, and she’d been pulled into the violence between the towns. It looked like the last place she wanted to be.
‘So what’s up with Kirk Watson?’ he asked her.
Tanya’s face scrunched into a scowl. ‘He’s a beast.’
‘What did Kirk want with you?’
‘I don’t know. I guess he blames me for what happened to Ashlynn.’ She added under her breath, ‘It’s partly my fault. I left her there.’
‘What does Ashlynn’s death have to do with Kirk?’
Tanya rolled her eyes. ‘It’s the feud. It makes him feel important. He’s always bragging about rescuing Barron from the people of St. Croix. It’s like he thinks he’s a general trying to win a war.’
‘Is that how the other kids in Barron feel?’ he asked.
‘Mostly they’re just afraid of him. He messes with the girls. He always has money, and nobody knows where he gets it. It’s like he’s got the whole town under his thumb.’
‘What about Ashlynn?’ Chris asked. ‘Did Kirk mess with her?’
‘They dated for a while.’
‘From what I’ve heard about Ashlynn, Kirk Watson doesn’t seem like her type.’
Tanya shrugged. ‘Kirk’s a jerk, but he’s pretty hot. Girls want to be with him, no matter what he does. Ashlynn dumped him, though. I don’t know, maybe he hit her or something.’
‘But now he’s trying to be an avenging angel when she’s dead?’
‘She was a Barron girl. She was Florian Steele’s daughter.’ Tanya added, ‘I’m really sorry about Livvy, you know. I feel like I betrayed her by talking to the police.’
‘She doesn’t blame you.’
‘Yeah, well, we were both stupid. I can’t believe what happened.’
Chris tried to read her eyes. He saw a scared teenager, in over her head. She wasn’t a compelling suspect to dangle in front of a jury. No one was likely to believe that she was a murderer. Even if she was.
‘What did happen that night?’ he asked.
Tanya blinked, as if she’d remembered who he was. ‘I don’t know if I should be talking to you.’
‘That’s okay. If you want, I’ll drive you home right now, and you don’t have to say a word. I’m just trying to help Olivia.’ He waited a beat and then added, ‘She says she didn’t do this, Tanya. She didn’t shoot Ashlynn.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I don’t know. Livvy was crazy that night. She had the gun, she was screaming at Ashlynn. That’s why I got the hell out of there. I called her later and she said nothing happened, but then I found out that Ashlynn was dead. I mean, who else could have done it, right?’
‘You called Olivia? When?’
‘It was an hour or so after I got home. I couldn’t sleep. I was watching TV in the living room, but I kept thinking about Ashlynn. So I called Livvy to make sure everything was okay.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
Tanya’s eyes fluttered, as if she’d made a mistake. ‘I – I don’t think I did.’
‘It’s okay. Tell me about the call.’
‘I called Livvy’s cell. She answered right away.’
‘Did she say where she was?’
‘She said she was home. I asked if Ashlynn was okay, and she said yeah, she was fine. She told me she sobered up and dropped the gun and left Ashlynn there.’
That was exactly what Olivia had told him, too. An hour after the crime, and four days after the crime, she was telling the same story. That was a good thing.
‘How did Olivia sound?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, she was pretty down. Like she’d been crying.’
‘Just to be clear, Olivia specifically told you that Ashlynn was fine.’
‘Yeah, that’s what she said.’
‘What else did you two talk about?’
‘I said, should we call somebody? You know, Ashlynn was stranded, shouldn’t we do something about it. I was pretty upset.’
‘Okay.’
‘Olivia said no. I figured she wanted to teach Ashlynn a lesson.’
‘Then what?’
‘That was it. I hung up. I went to bed, but I woke up around five o’clock, and I kept thinking about Ashlynn out there by herself. I felt really guilty that we didn’t help her. She didn’t deserve that. So I woke up my dad and told him the whole story, and he called the police.’
Chris was nervous about his next question; he didn’t want to inflame the girl’s suspicions. ‘Did you think about going back there yourself? I mean, after you hung up with Olivia. Did you think about driving back there and helping Ashlynn?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Tanya admitted.
He watched her face. ‘But you didn’t?’
‘No. I should have, but I didn’t want to be out there by myself.’
If she was lying, she was good at it. She met his eyes dead on, as if she were daring him not to believe her.
‘I really appreciate your help, Tanya,’ he told her. ‘Do you want me to drive you back to school?’
Tanya shook her head. ‘I want to see my dad.’
‘Does he have an office downtown?’
She nodded.
‘I’ll drive you down there.’ Chris pushed himself off the wet step, and as he headed down the sidewalk toward his car, Tanya caught up with him. She stopped him with a hand on his arm.
‘Mr. Hawk? I didn’t tell anyone about this, and I don’t know if you want to hear it or not.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well, there was something else going on between Ashlynn and Olivia.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know exactly what it was,’ Tanya said, shaking her head. ‘Olivia keeps a lot of stuff to herself, you know? I’d get upset with her sometimes, because she was keeping secrets from me. But this thing with Ashlynn, it wasn’t just about Mondamin. I could tell. It was something personal.’
9
The squat building that housed Rollie Swenson’s office was located behind a parking lot on a side street between downtown Barron and the Spirit River, with a view across the water toward the city park. It was built of tan stucco, dirty and cracked, and the sign on the outside window said simply: ‘Law Office.’
When Chris arrived with Tanya, Rollie hugged his daughter ferociously, then read her the riot act for leaving school without calling him. Maxine Valma had obviously filled him in about the fight. As he listened to the parental lecture, Chris remembered what it was like to have a child in his life every day, balancing love and discipline, security and independence. He missed it.
Seein
g Rollie Swenson was like seeing an alternative version of his own life. Rollie didn’t wear business suits. He wore a blue polo shirt and tan dress slacks and a comfortable pair of loafers. The slacks sported a coffee stain near the pocket. He was tall and stocky, with a bulging stomach that sagged below the top of his belt. He was in his late thirties, and he had messy black hair and a dark beard line. A yellow highlight marker had been shoved above his ear and forgotten.
Rollie looked like a lawyer who scraped for business with ads in the yellow pages. Generic brochures on personal injury, bankruptcy, divorce, and foreclosure, published by the Bar Association, were stacked on the counter. His law degree was in a drugstore photo frame on the wall. An empty air freshener sat on the lobby table among copies of farm and sports magazines. The waiting room smelled of grease. Inside Rollie’s office, behind the counter, Chris saw an open white foam box on his desk with a half-eaten cheeseburger and fries. Rollie’s lunch sat among a mountain of legal files.
‘Not exactly Faegre & Benson, is it?’ Rollie asked with an ironic smile. Faegre was the state’s largest corporate law firm, with a blue-chip roster of Fortune 500 clients.
‘I wish I charged their hourly rates,’ Chris said.
‘Oh, I bet you do okay.’ Rollie patted Tanya on the back and pointed her toward a spare office with a sofa, television, and conference table. ‘You hang out with your iPod for a while, okay, baby? I want to talk to Mr. Hawk.’
‘Sure.’ Tanya gave Chris a nervous glance as she retreated into the office. Rollie’s eyes lingered on his girl as he pulled the door shut, and it was obvious that his daughter was the center of his world. Not his work. Not his clients. Chris wished he’d learned that lesson years ago.
‘Come on back, Mr. Hawk,’ Rollie told him. ‘Sorry, I’m just finishing lunch.’
‘Call me Chris.’
‘You like fries, Chris?’
‘Love ’em, but not anymore.’
‘I hear you.’ Rollie led him into his office, took four fries in his hand, and munched them together. ‘I admire your willpower. Me, I can’t say no.’ He picked up the burger and took a large bite and washed it down with Coke. ‘Poor Tanya, she got my genes. My ex-wife is a beanpole.’
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