Blood Red Winter: A Thriller
Page 20
“No wait, there is one more thing,” I said. “A few months later, I got this post card with a poem. I think it was mailed to me by mistake. There was just something about it that stuck with me.”
“Can you remember any of it?” she asked.
“Actually, yes.” Having mulled it over as an addled teenager, I knew most of the lines fairly well. I repeated them to the best of my recollection.
Aria twirled a strand of her hair in her fingers, frowning and pushing out her bottom lip. She leaned back in her chair. “That sounds like Addison.” She nodded. “Yeah, those are lines from ‘When Rising From the Bed of Death.’”
I grunted, pushing myself back to sit up straighter. “Addison. That sounds familiar. How do you know the name of the poem?”
“I like to read,” Aria said. “And he’s a pretty famous poet. You heard of him?”
Addison. Addison. I knew the name somehow. Where did I know it from? And then I remembered. I slowly rubbed my arms to stem the chill as I called back the smoky, snapshot memory of the golden cathedral and white lilies gracing the altar. “Mary’s best friend quoted Addison in her eulogy. What is the poem about?”
“I haven’t read that one in a long time,” Aria said. “But from what I remember, it’s about asking for forgiveness and having a clean conscious when you die. And about the terror of being judged by God for your sins.”
I took a deep breath, looking down at my hands in my lap. Well, it seemed I had indeed been judged, but not by my maker. Seemed it was the other deity who called for me. I had long since abandoned any quest for redemption and cast myself into the abyss.
“Trent?” Aria said.
I studied my knuckles, barely hearing her. I could still see the dark scrapes and discoloration from the struggle.
“Trent,” she repeated.
I raised my eyes to face her, but constrained the urge to turn on my side and stare at the wall, retreating into my soft cloud of narcotic pain relievers.
“You’re free to feel about it however you want to feel about it, but it is not your fault she died.” She kept her dark eyes so motionless, compelling me to understand. I knew she somehow she believed that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Spring
Shortly before my release from the hospital, I got my wish and spoke with Reyes and Menard. The deputy sheriff and detective paid a visit to my room.
“Good morning, Mr. Lemend,” Reyes said. The clipboard slipped in his hand when he saw Aria beside me in her chair. He furrowed his brows at me, cleared his throat, and looked back to the young woman. “Good to see you, Ms. Owen.”
“It’s nice to see you too,” said Aria, reining in a smirk. She had insisted on being there while I covered all the gritty details so that she could “remind me” in case I left anything out. I liked her sense of humor.
“Mr. Lemend,” Detective Menard said, nodding at me. A solid frown covered his face as he got his recording device ready.
Aria gave up her seat to him, and he plopped down, making the plastic chair creak at the screws. The detective glared at me with his hard little eyes, giving me an “I-told-you-so” look – as though from what we covered in our last meeting, he wasn’t surprised I was now covered in bandages.
Reyes dragged another chair in from an adjoining room. “Trent, you have got to be both the unluckiest – and luckiest – person I have ever met. I’m sorry to see you under these circumstances, but I’m glad to see you.”
Alive, I thought.
Reyes gently clapped me on the shoulder before sitting down. “What can you tell us about what happened?”
My memory had returned and I recalled the County Road 219 sign, along with all the other grim aspects of my escape. I lay there and told Reyes and Menard everything about the day I was attacked, most importantly, the man’s name and where he lived – at least, where he lived when I last knew him. I imparted what I understood of his motive, at last grasping how all the scattered pieces formed a whole.
I told them something else, too. “The time before this, when I went into Tim’s old house, looking for my phone. The message on the wall said ‘She’s dead anyway.’ First I thought it was referring to Aria. Then I thought it must be about Elizabeth. Now I know it wasn’t about either of them. It was about Mary. That was Mr. Durham’s way of telling me that no matter what my intentions were, or what I actually did or didn’t do, the result was the same. Mary is dead.”
“And it was twelve years ago when his daughter died of postpartum sepsis?” Menard asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But as far as he’s concerned, it wouldn’t make a difference if it were a hundred.”
When I couldn’t think of any more to tell them, Reyes stood up and shook my hand. “Thank you, Trent. Looks like we have enough to proceed. We’ll contact you if we have anything further.”
Menard rose as well. He checked the time on his Rolex and wished me a speedy recovery.
After the detective left the room, Reyes stopped and turned to us with his eyebrow slightly raised. “And Trent. You might consider moving back to the city. It’s safer.” With a wink so brief I almost missed it, the deputy sheriff disappeared through the curtain.
Reyes’ joke was unfortunately true, and the thought of going home launched a cannon ball into my stomach. As it turned out, the ghost from my past was a lot better at playing sick games and ruining my life than he was at hiding from the police, and on March 20th, the following news article appeared online.
Austin man arrested on murder charges.
AUSTIN – (KXAV) Patrick H. Durham of central Austin has been in custody since Wednesday after the alleged abduction and battery of Trent Lemend, a resident of unincorporated Williamson County. Since his arrest at his second residence in Florence, partially blind 57-year-old Durham confessed to the first degree murder of Elizabeth Reinhardt of Austin and several accounts of attempted first degree murder, including hiring others to assassinate Lemend, before deciding to take matters into his own hands.
Emile R. Woodard of Travis County, who was already in custody and undergoing interrogation by police at the time of Durham’s arrest, admitted to being hired by Durham as a hitman. Bradley Premshaw of Fairhope, Alabama, was also named by Durham as someone he paid to try to dispose of Lemend. Premshaw, a truck driver for Pall Transport, Inc., has not yet been located by police for questioning.
Lemend, who was rendered unconscious with a crow bar and later woke up a captive in the trunk of Durham’s car, has declined interview at this time. However, Williamson County Deputy Sheriff Alberto Reyes stated that the victim knew Patrick Durham from approximately twelve years ago, when Lemend was in his teens. Durham was born in Champaign, Illinois, and in 1982 he and his wife moved to Austin for work reasons.
Reyes, who has been an officer with the Investigations Division for fourteen years, told KXAV, “We’re glad to see the particulars of this case extricated from County Road 118, which we previously thought may have a connection. With these developments and Durham awaiting prosecution, we’re able to put things into correct perspective. The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office is grateful that Mr. Lemend, whose call to 911 in January saved a woman’s life on County Road 118, lived through this crime and helped us get Durham into custody. While Ms. Reinhardt’s murder is a terrible tragedy and we mourn her family’s loss, putting Durham behind bars will ensure he can’t do this to anyone else.”
Forensics matched the DNA taken from blood in Durham’s vehicle to Lemend’s DNA, another piece of evidence that will be used in prosecution. Durham is currently being held in Travis County...
For the first time, I was able to make the connection regarding Illinois. I had received a phone call from an Illinois number, which I didn’t answer, on the day I was shot at on Tim’s ranch. The post card was sent from Illinois. Since Mr. Durham was originally from Illinois, he was probably there visiting family when he mailed that strange message to me – an omen “in the words of Addison.”
I t
ried reaching Bradley Premshaw again, though I knew he was about as likely to answer as a steer was to volunteer for branding. His number gave me the “disconnected” message. Without talking to him, I could only expand upon my original hypothesis. Given the details in the article and the little I knew of Bradley’s nature, I think Durham indeed paid him to wreck my pickup, but Bradley thought it was empty. He needed money, and when he was offered a reasonable sum to crash into an empty Silverado parked out in the middle of nowhere, he took it. It was just an old truck, anyhow. But realizing what he’d almost done – killed someone – he’d rather make it right than have that on his conscious. So that’s what he did. I guess I shouldn’t feel sorry for that good old boy, but I almost do.
I really had to hand it to Patrick Durham, because for all his mistakes he was pretty thorough. Even Jared had played his part. He had delivered the photo with the strange threat on the back – more lines from the poem by Addison. Jared looked enough like Kyle to pass when Louie described him to me. Mr. Durham even saw to it that Elizabeth cheated on me, just like I had done to Mary. But Elizabeth was a better person than he gave her credit for. She had come to her senses and stopped the affair before it went too far.
Korey Nemeth’s trial was yesterday, and he got life without parole. Not only was Aria strong, but she had been right about so many things, and she deserved the peace of mind his sentence brought her. I put her in touch with Kyle, ironically based on his suggestion, but apt under the circumstances. Aria was grateful to take the job working at his realty, an area in which she was already trained and experienced. She was able to rent a room in a nice home in central Round Rock, something she preferred to living alone in an apartment.
Tim gave me the green light to return to the ranch as soon as I was able, and I was counting the days since my savings were almost depleted. With no further threat of my presence attracting snipers, I would resume in a few weeks. My Ruger would accompany me, just in case.
At least I didn’t need to replace yet another pistol after being attacked. When I returned from the hospital, my 9mm was on the ground exactly where I had dropped it before I got knocked out. I didn’t get as lucky with the cell phone; I was now on phone number three in as many months.
Time would pass more slowly now, and nothing could entirely halt the image of Elizabeth’s face and the sharp pains that tore at my soul. No amount of guilt or sorrow could ever bring her back. In the wake of my life’s wreckage, there was only one small comfort. This part of my life had finally ended. My troubled past had at last come to a conclusion, and Aria and I were safe now, free to make our lives into whatever we could make of them, in whatever way we found.
If I could write one last chapter to Mary’s story, it would be written to her father, though I doubt he’d comprehend a line of it. If I could have brought Mary back from the dead by murdering the man who wronged her, I probably would have tried it too. But just as the universe doesn’t care about maybes, it doesn’t make things right again through desperate acts of revenge.
The news article appeared on the first day of spring and I sat outside in the bright, warm morning. The mesquite trees in the sheep pasture were starting to green, and soon I wouldn’t be able to see between them. Bluebonnets were bursting up in the yard, in patches in the fields, and along the shoulder near the barbed wire fence. Winter was over, without letting so much as one snowflake fall. I’ve always known that winter in central Texas is seldom white. Sometimes it’s blood red.
Table of Contents
BLOOD RED WINTER
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE