Spilled Blood

by Brian Freeman

  ‘You’re a Christian, Mrs. Steele, so you know the Book of Genesis.’

  ‘Of course, but what are you talking about?’

  ‘God looked around at the world He had created and saw that it was so corrupt, so evil, so wicked, that it was beyond salvation. He determined to destroy it so that humankind could start over.’

  The man who called himself Aquarius reached over and removed Julia’s blindfold. She squinted at the light, squeezing her eyes shut. Even the gray day felt bright after a night of darkness. When she could see, she craned her neck to stare through the windows of the van.

  She knew where they were. She didn’t understand.

  And then she did.

  ‘Oh, dear Lord,’ she murmured.

  Aquarius didn’t react. He reached for his phone and dialed. ‘Mr. Steele?’ he said when Florian answered. ‘You know who this is. It’s time we met.’

  47

  Chris watched Olivia from the doorway of Hannah’s bedroom. His daughter had a pencil in her teeth, and her brown eyes were serious and focused as she tapped on the keys of the computer. A long strand of her hair came loose on her cheek, and she brushed it back behind her ear. She wore a baggy pink T-shirt over her skinny frame and cotton boxers. Her feet were bare. Staring at her, he thought what any father would think. She was the prettiest girl in the whole world.

  He didn’t say anything, but eventually she felt his presence, and the pencil dropped from her mouth. She gave him a smile. ‘Oh, hey, Dad,’ she said and went back to her work.

  It was a nothing moment that felt like everything to Chris. If you didn’t pay attention to those moments, they were gone. He couldn’t believe he had missed out on three years of those smiles, and standing there, he swore to himself that he would never miss out on any of them again. He would never spend a day of his life where he didn’t tell his daughter how he felt.

  He walked over and kissed her on top of her head. ‘I love you, kiddo.’

  Olivia stopped typing. She looked up at him strangely. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Fine.’ Chris slid down next to the bed and took a picture of her in his mind, the kind of picture you deliberately tried to remember for years. ‘So what are you doing?’

  ‘Research.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Cancer.’

  Chris frowned. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I don’t like doing nothing. I like to fight.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘I’m trying to think of the best way to kick cancer’s butt. Like, do I become a doctor? Or a lab rat trying to find a cure? Or do I just get really rich so I can give away lots of money?’

  He laughed. ‘I think whatever you do, you will kick butt.’

  ‘Unless I’m in jail, huh?’

  ‘That’s not going to happen. Don’t even think about that.’

  Olivia got up from the chair and slid down next to him beside the bed. ‘Can I tell you something? I haven’t said anything to Mom, but I’ve been thinking about it.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

  Chris put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. ‘I know. It’s okay. Remember, Mom’s a fighter, too.’

  ‘It’s bad, though, huh? She doesn’t talk about it, so I figure she’s trying to protect me. I wish she would just be straight with me. I know how horrible it can be. I saw it with Kimberly.’

  ‘Cancer’s never good, but your Mom is about the strongest person I’ve ever met. Except maybe for you.’

  His daughter spoke softly, her head buried in the crook of his neck, her chestnut hair swishing over his shoulder. ‘You still love her, don’t you?’

  ‘Olivia,’ he murmured.

  ‘It’s not like you’re a great actor, Dad. I can see it in your face. So if you were in love with her, how could you let her go?’

  It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t angry. She said it curiously, but there was another question in her voice. It was tucked behind the wall, unspoken. How could you let me go? She wanted the truth. She wanted him to be straight with her. He owed it to her to be straight with himself.

  He thought about a million different excuses. A million different ways to rationalize the mistakes they’d made. It all boiled down to one thing.

  ‘I always thought she’d come back,’ he said.

  Olivia said nothing for a long time. ‘That’s funny,’ she said finally.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I think Mom always thought you’d come after her.’

  Chris laid his head back against the soft blankets of the bed and did his best not to let his emotions spill from his eyes.

  ‘Guess we’re all pretty stubborn,’ she said.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘I suppose when this is all over, you go back home, huh?’ Her voice was light. Her fear was real.

  He nudged her head from his shoulder and stroked her face. ‘Whatever happens, Olivia, I promise you this. I’ll always be there for you.’

  ‘That sounds good to me.’ She stood up again, and she stretched her gangly arms over her head. Her face clouded over. ‘It must have sucked for Ashlynn.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Knowing what kind of man her dad is. Knowing what he did.’

  ‘We don’t know exactly what Florian did or didn’t do, Olivia, but I’m sure he loved his daughter.’

  ‘Yeah, but she found something, right? That’s what got her killed.’

  ‘Maybe. I think she discovered something about this man who calls himself Aquarius, but I can’t figure out how she did it. She was researching Vernon Clay, but now it looks like he’s been dead for years. She was researching Lucia Causey, and she’s dead, too. If Ashlynn found something, she’s smarter than all of us.’

  Olivia sat down at the computer again and limbered up her fingers like a pianist. ‘Well, let’s see if I can retrace her steps.’

  ‘I did that,’ Chris said, ‘but without her laptop or her notes, I don’t know what she found. She posted about Lucia’s death, but she didn’t leave much of a trail.’

  Olivia grinned. ‘No offense, Dad, but this is a job for a geeky daughter, not a legal beagle. What did you do, run Google searches?’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Well, I guess that was it.’

  She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Okay. Lucia Causey.’ She opened up a screen and ten seconds later, she announced, ‘She’s pretty. I mean, for being old.’

  ‘You got a picture of her?’

  ‘Sure. She’s on Facebook.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Chris said.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s not like they go out and take the pages down.’

  Chris stared over Olivia’s shoulder at a photograph of Lucia Causey. His daughter was right. Lucia was pretty and not just for being old. She was probably in her mid-forties at the time the photograph was taken. She had jet-black hair, a hawk nose, and a big, teasing smile. Her features were slim and elegant. ‘She reminds me of Sophia Loren,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind. I thought you had to be friends with her to see anything.’

  ‘That depends on your privacy settings. Most people don’t have a clue what’s out there for strangers to see. You can usually find out where people live, what they like, who their friends are, that kind of thing.’ Olivia’s fingers flashed on the keys. ‘Wow, she really liked Las Vegas. Tons of photos of the Strip. She stayed at the Bellagio and the Wynn.’

  ‘One of the guys on the chat site said she’d had gambling problems.’

  ‘Yeah, looks like she was a blackjack fiend. There are links to some sites about card-counting strategies and links to Atlantic City, Jackson, and a bunch of Indian casinos. She was pretty into it. Kinda weird for a brainiac, huh?’

  ‘Everybody has their weaknesses.’

  ‘Let’s see how bad it got,’ Olivia said. She typed again. ‘Here’s her address in Cupertino. Nice that she’s got a unique name. You can’t miss Lucia
Causey, huh? She didn’t bother with unlisted numbers either. Anyway, let me get the county records for her house.’

  ‘I know how to do that, too, you know,’ Chris said defensively.

  Olivia opened up a window with a maze of legal filings for the California property. ‘So what does this all mean?’

  Chris studied the records. ‘It means she was on the verge of losing her home three years ago. The lender initiated foreclosure proceedings.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then the loan was satisfied. The lien was removed.’

  ‘You mean it got paid off?’

  Chris nodded. ‘Yup.’

  ‘She was so far behind they were going to take her house, and then she paid off her mortgage?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Any idea how much?’

  Chris reached across her to the keyboard and clicked on the lien satisfaction. ‘One point six million dollars.’

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ Olivia clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, you got it right.’

  ‘Where’d she get the money?’

  ‘I’d like to know,’ Chris said, but it wasn’t hard to guess the truth. The payoff had occurred only weeks after the Mondamin litigation was dismissed on summary judgment.

  Olivia opened up another window. ‘I can’t believe this woman killed herself. I wouldn’t kill myself if someone dropped a million bucks in my lap.’

  ‘Ashlynn thought she was murdered.’

  His daughter frowned as she typed. ‘Well, the police sure don’t think so. They say she committed suicide a year ago in her garage. One year ago today, in fact. Can you fake it so that it looks like someone sucked a tailpipe?’

  ‘That’s not exactly my line of work,’ Chris said. ‘I suppose people who do that sort of thing can make anything look convincing.’

  ‘So why would Ashlynn think it wasn’t suicide?’

  ‘I don’t know. Unless she found something in her father’s files.’

  ‘’fraid I can’t help you with that, Dad.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He kissed her again. ‘Thanks for your help, kiddo.’

  Olivia clicked back to Lucia Causey’s Facebook profile and opened up a listing of her fan pages. ‘Hey, here’s a reason to kill yourself. She liked Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Yikes.’

  Chris laughed. ‘I prefer NCIS.’

  ‘Uh huh, but you’re also about a hundred years old, Dad. Let’s see, she also liked Keeping the House by Ellen Baker, Six Feet Under, the Bay to Breakers race, Luciano Pavarotti, Pink Ribbons Against Breast Cancer, sausage and peppers from Chiaramonte’s, the Geico gecko, wonder bras from Victoria’s Secret, and the Sunol Regional Wilderness.’

  He pushed himself off the floor and headed for the bedroom doorway. ‘I kind of like that stupid gecko, too.’

  ‘Yeah, and I bet you’re okay with those wonder bras, Dad.’

  Chris chuckled. He was out of the bedroom and halfway down the dark hallway when he stopped dead in his tracks. Cold air breathed up the back of his body, from his heels to his neck, as if he’d found his path blocked by a ghost. Maybe he had. Maybe Ashlynn was with him in the house, whispering in his ear. He spun around and marched back to the bedroom, gripping the door frame with both hands.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked Olivia.

  ‘Wonder bras?’

  ‘No, no, before that. Something about a delicatessen that Lucia liked?’

  Olivia checked the screen. ‘Sausage and peppers from Chiaramonte’s. Why, are you hungry?’

  Chris didn’t answer. He knew. Ashlynn knew, too; it would have been simple for her to discover the truth. It had been laid out in front of him since the moment he arrived in town. Every conversation with his friend, his philosopher, should have told him what was going on. He’d been looking for a vast conspiracy, and the reality was so much simpler. The reality was about love and loss.

  Is it better to do nothing in the face of injustice or do the wrong thing?

  Aquarius had made his choice.

  Chris realized Olivia had found something else, too, something that he had failed to notice as he ran searches in his car in the rain. Something terrible and important. ‘Did you say that Lucia Causey committed suicide one year ago today?’

  ‘Today,’ she repeated.

  He didn’t say anything. He turned and ran.

  48

  Florian did as he was instructed; he told no one about his rendezvous with Aquarius. If he brought the police, Julia died. He went alone, but he didn’t go without protection. The Ruger that he normally kept in his glove apartment was buried in the pocket of his wool coat. It was a cold day. He would keep his hands in his pockets, the way anyone would. All he needed was an opportunity to pull the trigger.

  He didn’t know who this man was, or what he knew, but he had no intention of letting him leave their meeting alive. This game ended today. Aquarius would be gone.

  He listened to Brahms on the car stereo as he drove. The sound was so rich and vivid, it was as if the pianist were with him in the car, fingers meticulously unlocking the puzzle of the music. It calmed him. He remembered how much Ashlynn had loved this concerto as a girl. She’d acquired his taste for the classics at a young age. She would close her eyes and pretend to play, and when it was over, she would bow, as if the audience were silently cheering her.

  Ashlynn.

  He wondered if it was true that she’d turned against him. He wondered how much she knew before she died. He hated to think that, in her last days of life, she would have hated him for what he’d done.

  Florian passed the headquarters of Mondamin on the river as he drove north, but he didn’t stop. The guards at the gate recognized his car; they waved at him. He tooted his horn in salute. The facility operated 24/7; it was never empty, never idle. A decade earlier, there had been nothing on that land. He’d built it all from his own sweat, his own vision. People’s livelihoods depended on him. If Mondamin was at risk, if it was under threat, he was sworn to defend it. That was his job.

  Ashlynn, try to understand.

  If only she’d come to him and given him a chance to explain.

  He continued into the dense wilderness. The meeting-ground wasn’t far. Trees on both sides leaned over the road, and he caught glimpses of the river winking in and out of the forest. For three miles, the highway was like a tunnel crossing from one world to the next, and when he finally burst into the open, he was at the county gateway. The Spirit Dam muscled across the water. The thick trees gave way to swaths of dormant park land tracking the giant lake. Ribbons of charcoal clouds stretched overhead in dark layers.

  He parked on the Barron side of the dam and got out. He buttoned his coat and tugged up his collar. The wind off the water bit his skin. He shoved his hands in his pockets and marched onto the concrete bridge. To his left, the lake sprawled over a mile of erratic banks like a well-fed spider. Below him, winding toward the town, the Spirit River swirled in white foam as the dam squeezed a pulsing current through its gates into the narrow canal.

  Florian saw a dark blue van parked on the concrete deck. Its windows were smoked; he couldn’t see inside. Its headlights blinked at him. Aquarius was waiting, but Florian didn’t hurry. As he crossed the dam, he glanced in every direction to make sure they were alone. His fingers gripped the gun in his pocket.

  The driver’s door of the van opened. A man climbed out. Without his anonymous threats, and with his identity unmasked, Aquarius was an ordinary man. He was a stranger, but he wasn’t scary. Florian didn’t know him, but he studied him carefully, assessing the danger. The man was underdressed for the weather, with no coat. He saw no gun in the man’s hands and no place where he could hide one. He wondered if the man was foolish enough to think that Florian would come unarmed.

  He didn’t see Julia.

  They approached each other warily, like spies at a prisoner exchange. When they were ten feet apart, Florian stopped, and so did Aquarius.

  ‘Mr.
Florian Steele,’ the man announced. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this moment.’

  ‘Where’s my wife?’

  ‘First things first. I’m sure you have a phone. Please throw it in the river.’

  Florian reached inside his coat and slid out his phone from an inner pocket. He stood next to a steel railing. In the warmer months, people fished here, dropping their lines into the agitated water. He flipped his phone into the whirlpool, where it disappeared.

  ‘You came alone?’ the man asked. ‘No police?’

  ‘That’s what you told me to do.’ His eyes darted toward the van and the lake. He listened, but the roar of the water through the dam was a thunder covering every other noise.

  Aquarius smiled. ‘You’re wondering if I’m alone. You’re wondering if someone else is in the van with your wife. Or perhaps there is a sniper on the bank, with a cross-hair trained on your head.’

  ‘Is there?’

  The smile washed away. Aquarius headed for the passenger door of the van and opened it, and he helped Julia out to the bridge. His wife, always as perfectly arranged as jewels in a store window, looked fragile and pale. Aquarius took a pocket knife from his pocket and cut the bonds that held Julia’s hands behind her back. She stretched her fingers, restoring the circulation.

  Their eyes met. He tried to decipher her expression. He saw sadness and fear. Anger. There was sorrow, but no love. Her heart was dead to him. He realized you can’t rescue someone from a cage you built yourself.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

  She said nothing. She brushed her tangled hair from her eyes.

  Aquarius held out his hand to Florian. ‘Your car keys, Mr. Steele.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I promised you I would free your wife. I’m keeping my promise.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘I thought it was understood, Mr. Steele,’ Aquarius said. ‘You’re not leaving.’

  Florian wanted to laugh. The threat sounded hollow, but there was no hint of a bluff in the man’s eyes. There was no mercy. He shrugged, extracting his keys from his pants pocket, throwing them across the short space. The man caught them and passed the keys to Julia.