Spilled Blood

by Brian Freeman

  Seeing her, talking to her, laughing with her, made his heart ache. She reminded him that his own youth was behind him. She made him wish he could go back and live it all over, even if he could change nothing. Then again, Ashlynn made his heart sing, too, because she had such promise. When he was caught up in the evil of the world, she showed him a glimmer of light. He imagined her growing up, learning, working, marrying, having children of her own. Someone like her couldn’t help but do great things.

  For that reason, he’d hoped to spare her. He would have found a way to keep her safe, even if it meant taking her to a sanctuary where she couldn’t escape. He wouldn’t let her become a victim of his plan.

  It was not to be.

  He remembered the rainy afternoon when she showed up in his doorway. He hadn’t seen her in a long time, so he was surprised. Without her saying a word, he realized that she knew. It was in her face. She looked at him in a new way, as if she were seeing him for the first time. Her hair was wet, and the rain poured over her, but she didn’t hunt for cover. She simply stared at him. He could feel her reaching out, as if the secret they shared had drawn them closer together.

  Ashlynn was a smart girl. You could see it in those ocean-blue eyes, how they didn’t miss anything. He wasn’t really surprised that she’d learned the truth. He’d fooled everyone else, but not her.

  ‘I know who you are,’ she told him. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

  He didn’t answer, and she didn’t give him time to explain. She vanished as quickly as she’d come, as if she didn’t want anyone to see her. Maybe she’d simply wanted to deliver a warning, to let him know that if she could figure it out, others would, too. She didn’t tell him to stop. There was no judgment in her face.

  Now it was too late to save her. She’d become another victim of the sins of Florian Steele. Her death hurt him more deeply than he’d ever imagined, but if anything, it made him more convinced that he’d chosen the only path possible.

  Retribution. Destruction.

  He was parked behind an old barn twenty miles west of Barron. After months acquiring materials, and weeks of overnight labor, he was nearly ready. He got out and undid the deadbolt on the tall side door, and when he was inside he relocked the door behind him. The floor under his feet was lined with a thick rubber sheath; he couldn’t risk static during the dry winter. He disabled the motion sensor alarm by entering his security code. He switched on the fluorescent lights strung across the ceiling, making the oversized building as bright as an airport hangar.

  The Ford E-350 cargo van waited in the center of a musty space that still carried a decades-old smell of farm fertilizer. The van was dark blue and windowless, except for privacy glass installed on the windshield and side doors. He’d purchased it used in December, for cash, from a seller in Ames he’d found on Craigslist. The maximum payload was 4,000 pounds, which was more than adequate for his purposes.

  He’d left bread crumbs for the police in Ames. He’d done the same here in Barron, little tracks for them to follow if they were smart. In the end, in the aftermath, he wanted everyone to know why. He wanted them to understand. He wondered if the police had begun to nibble at the crumbs. He wondered how close they were to finding him. It didn’t matter. He would drive the cargo van out of the barn tonight and never return. His plan began tomorrow. He didn’t expect to sleep between now and then. He’d barely slept at all for days, as the time of execution drew near. Death had a way of focusing the mind.

  It would begin in the darkness, and in the first light of dawn, it would be over.

  I am the vengeance of God.

  My name is Aquarius.

  PART THREE

  SINS OF THE FATHER

  30

  Chris didn’t sleep.

  He stayed with Hannah in the ghost town until two in the morning. When they finally parted, he sensed her reluctance to go home alone. Or maybe it was pent-up desire. He thought that she wanted to ask him to come with her but couldn’t find the words to say so. Something had changed between them, but neither was ready to acknowledge it. Even so, he returned to the motel and lay in bed without closing his eyes, and all he could think about was Hannah.

  At six in the morning, he gave up on sleep and went back to the hospital. He wasn’t alone there. Glenn Magnus lay in the visitor’s lounge, his long legs stretched out on the sofa, his arms behind his head. His tired eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. His unruly blond hair hadn’t been washed, and he was dressed casually, in a sweatshirt and jeans. The lights in the lounge made the room unnaturally bright.

  ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’ Chris asked.

  The minister nodded. The fluorescent bulbs made his pale face look almost dead. ‘I got here an hour ago.’

  ‘How’s Johan?’

  ‘Angry. I’m worried about him.’

  ‘Did you tell him about Ashlynn and the baby?’

  ‘I did. There was no way to cushion the blow. I’m afraid I lit a fire with him, and I don’t know what he’ll do.’

  The minister pushed himself up on the sofa. Chris sat down next to him.

  ‘Can I ask you something about Ashlynn?’ Chris said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When did you last talk to her?’

  Magnus rubbed his face with both hands to awaken himself. ‘Sometime in February. It was shortly before she broke up with Johan. I didn’t talk to her again after that.’

  ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘Depressed. Of course, I had no idea at the time what she was wrestling with. I wish I’d known.’

  ‘Did she contact you at all before her death?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’m sure she felt she couldn’t turn to me after she broke Johan’s heart.’

  ‘You told me that when Ashlynn first came to you, she suspected her father’s company of causing the cancer cluster. Did she say why?’

  ‘I think she simply found it hard to believe that God would be so arbitrary,’ Magnus said. ‘She refused to accept what everyone told us, that the deaths were simply a mathematical anomaly. An accident of fate.’

  ‘Do you believe that’s true?’ Chris asked.

  The minister stared blankly at the paintings on the hospital wall. ‘I lost my little girl, Chris. I had to watch Kimberly suffer. I couldn’t blame God, so I blamed Florian and Mondamin. They were responsible. They were guilty.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I’ve run out of blame. I shouldn’t have questioned God’s will.’

  ‘Are you saying you no longer believe there was a connection between Mondamin and the deaths in St. Croix?’

  ‘I’m no expert in science, but I know what the experts told us. The people at the county and state said they had no basis to run tests, given the size of the cluster. We didn’t listen. A Stanford scientist studied everything during the litigation, and she told the judge there was no connection. Still we didn’t listen. Who am I to say they were wrong and we were right? It’s over, it’s done. I’ve let it go.’

  ‘Ashlynn didn’t.’

  ‘She was a young, idealistic girl. She wanted an explanation. God isn’t in that business.’

  ‘What about Vernon Clay?’ Chris asked. ‘Did you and Ashlynn talk about him?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, we did. Remember, Vernon was our principal suspect. Ashlynn fixated on Vernon when I talked about him.’

  ‘Did she know anything about his work that would have connected him to the deaths in St. Croix?’

  ‘Not that she ever told me. Why?’

  ‘She was still talking about him only days before her death. She seemed to blame him for what happened to her baby.’

  Magnus ran a big hand through his hair, leaving it a mess of cowlicks. ‘I never should have put the idea in her head.’

  ‘Did you know Vernon Clay?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Of course. He worked at Mondamin in the early days, and he lived near St. Croix. He came to our church, but he didn’t really interact with the other parishioners. H
e was a loner. My wife was the only one who ever got close to him. She had a weakness for vulnerable adults.’

  ‘Vulnerable adults? What does that mean?’

  ‘Vernon was extraordinarily intelligent, but he was largely unable to function among other people. Clinically, I’d say he was borderline schizophrenic. He spouted conspiracy theories all the time, truly crazy ideas. He was deeply paranoid, always convinced that people were scheming to steal his research. And yet his mind was wired for science. He had a gift. There are more people like that than you’d believe – people who work and make a living but who are barely competent on other levels.’

  ‘But your wife got through to him?’

  Magnus smiled. ‘Leah was persistent. She’d bring him meals, talk to him, sit by him in church. Really, she became his social lifeline. I think she was the one thread connecting him to the real world. She was probably the only person who took an interest in him for something other than his work.’

  ‘You said you lost your wife almost ten years ago,’ Chris said. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘It was a brain aneurysm. The doctors said she’d probably carried it all her life. One morning, she simply never woke up.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was painless, and she was gone in an instant. If God was going to take her, at least he did so quickly. It was merciful, compared with what happened to Kimberly.’

  ‘How did Vernon Clay react to losing his social lifeline?’ Chris asked.

  Magnus shook his head. ‘Oh, it was very sad. He withdrew even further inside himself. His delusions became much worse. He blamed everyone in town for Leah’s death. He showed up in church one day and ranted about our being murderers and the Devil coming for us and even about the Mafia and the CIA, as I recall. That was the last time he set foot in St. Croix.’

  ‘I can’t believe Florian kept him on at Mondamin.’

  ‘Well, I told you, he was perfectly functional when he put on his lab coat. From what I heard, Vernon was as much a genius as ever in his own world. If anything, he was even more obsessive about it. He worked seven days a week. I think he mostly went home to sleep, and then he went back to his lab. That was the only place he felt comfortable.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I have no idea. About four years ago, he disappeared. Honestly, he could have been gone longer, and I’m not sure anyone outside Mondamin would have realized it. We only found out he was gone when his house burned down.’

  ‘Was that an accident?’ Chris asked.

  ‘No, it was arson. Whoever did it was never caught. Most people suspected local kids.’ Magnus frowned.

  ‘You sound like you don’t believe it.’

  ‘Well, that was when the rumors started. We were in the midst of the cancer diagnoses among the children when Vernon vanished. Some people thought Florian arranged for the house to be burned to erase evidence.’

  ‘Evidence of what?’

  ‘Evidence that Vernon had been poisoning us for years. There were those who suspected he had a delusional vendetta against us going back to my wife’s death. Others said that Vernon had taken to writing his formulae on the walls of his house, and so Florian had to destroy the house to secure any trade secrets. Believe what you want.’

  ‘What about the dead land?’

  ‘Same rumors. People suspected that Vernon had been testing experimental pesticides on the fields around his house. They said Florian wanted to erase all evidence of what had been used. Maybe it was to protect company secrets. Maybe it was toxic. When we filed the lawsuit, we were desperate to believe almost anything.’

  ‘You tried to find him.’

  ‘Yes, without success. Vernon never re-entered the scientific community. He became our mystery man.’ He added, ‘I’m not sure where you’re going with all of this, Chris.’

  ‘It’s the timing that bothers me. All of this coming up just before Ashlynn was killed. Hannah and I wondered if she could have discovered something about Vernon that everyone else missed. Something that became a motive for her murder.’

  ‘What do you think, that she found out where he was hiding? That he came back here and killed her? I realize you’re trying to help Olivia, but I don’t think anyone is going to believe that.’

  Chris nodded. Magnus was right. He knew he was chasing ghosts, and he didn’t know whether to believe in them. ‘I admit, it may be nothing at all. So far, I can’t connect the dots.’

  ‘I suppose that leaves you back where you started,’ the minister said. ‘In other words, you’re back to Johan. If Olivia is innocent, my son must be guilty.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You didn’t have to, Chris, but you’re wrong.’

  He realized that he and Glenn Magnus were divided by irreconcilable faiths in their children. He also knew what the minister was really thinking. ‘You’re convinced that Olivia killed her, aren’t you? That’s what you’ve believed all along.’

  ‘I hope that’s not true. Truly, I do. I only know that Johan didn’t kill her.’

  ‘He went to the ghost town,’ Chris reminded him. ‘Her blood is on his clothes. You can’t run away from that, Glenn.’

  ‘Olivia was there, too, and she had the gun in her hand. She was pointing it at Ashlynn’s head. I’m sorry, Chris. Can you really not accept the possibility that she made a youthful, impulsive mistake? That she pulled the trigger and can’t bear to admit it?’

  The minister’s voice was calm, and his composure was infuriating because everything he said was logical. Chris was alone in defending Olivia. Everyone else assumed she was guilty. Even Hannah had doubts. He was the outlier who couldn’t face the truth.

  He also heard another undercurrent in what Magnus was saying. The minister knew Olivia better than he did. Olivia had grown up without him. He’d been missing in action, far away from the turmoil of her life. Did he really know whether his daughter was capable of murder?

  ‘That’s not what happened,’ Chris insisted.

  ‘Fair enough. We both have faith. I hope we’re both right.’

  Chris said nothing more. He glanced up as he saw a nurse hovering in the doorway of the lounge. She was obviously reluctant to interrupt them, but her eyes flicked around the empty room with concern. She backed out without saying anything, but Chris got up to stop her.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  The nurse looked at Glenn Magnus nervously. ‘I was hoping your son was in here with you.’

  Magnus stood up, too. He was immediately concerned. ‘Johan’s not in his room?’

  ‘No. I’ve searched the floor. I can’t find him.’ She added, ‘I’m sure he’s here somewhere, though.’

  The minister marched toward the hallway, brushing past the nurse. Chris followed. It was still early, and the hospital floor was deserted. Johan’s room was at the end of the hall, the last room before the EXIT sign over the stairway. The door was open. Magnus pushed past the curtain, calling his son’s name softly as he entered. Chris heard the minister inhale sharply. The bed was unmade, but it was empty.

  ‘He may be with Olivia,’ Chris suggested. ‘Let’s not panic.’

  ‘I’ll check,’ the nurse replied.

  She hurried up the corridor toward Olivia’s room, but Magnus threw open the door of the small closet, where empty hangers dangled on the wooden rod. ‘No, his clothes are gone.’

  ‘You think he left?’ Chris asked.

  ‘He must have gone down the back stairs.’

  The minister retreated to the window near the stairwell and examined the dark parking lot below them. There were only a handful of cars there in the early morning hours. He pointed at a section of the lot bathed under the glow of a street light. ‘My car is gone. I parked next to that light. He took it.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’ Chris asked.

  Magnus shook his head. ‘The last thing I did was tell him about Ashlynn and the baby. He was stricken. I never should have told him.’ He
murmured to himself, as if praying, ‘Johan, what do you think you’re doing, son? Don’t be a fool.’

  31

  Kirk Watson deposited Lenny at the Indian monument half an hour before the scheduled drop.

  The eastern horizon was pink. A cardinal sang from the bare trees and flew past Lenny in a flash of red. He hiked up the cracked gravel road from the highway with binoculars slung around his neck. The road led to a park on the shallow hillside, dominated by an obelisk of rough gray stone. Huge trees dotted the open lawn surrounding the monument. Once, when he was really bored, he’d read the historical marker. The monument honored a pioneer victory in a long-ago frontier war, when Dakota Indians surrendered to a Minnesota colonel and released hundreds of farmers they’d held captive. If Lenny had been an Indian, he would have warned them: They’ll kill you anyway, guys.

  He sat down on a park bench to watch the highway traffic going in and out of Barron. Two sets of headlights stared from the predawn gloom in the east. The bass growl of the engine told him the first vehicle was a semi. He raised his binoculars and focused, watching the truck draw closer. As it roared past the entrance road to the monument, he could make out its distinguishing characteristics. The trailer was white, mostly unmarked, with numbers painted on the side like a code. Kirk had told him once that a lot of the unmarked trucks were military, carrying secret payloads. The truck headed west, doing at least seventy, and he wondered what was inside.

  Behind the truck, the other set of headlights didn’t move. A vehicle was parked on the shoulder a mile away. Lenny couldn’t identify the car, and he couldn’t remember whether it had been waiting there as he hiked from the highway. He wondered whether someone could have followed them. The headlights watched him like unblinking eyes, and as two or three minutes passed, his fears grew. He was getting ready to warn his brother when the headlights winked out, and he saw the red flicker of tail lights as the car reversed direction. It disappeared, turning south on one of the long farm driveways. He breathed easier.