Thief River Falls

by Brian Freeman

  She backed away from the fireplace. There were no other pictures on the mantel and none on any of the walls or on the tables around the living room. What struck her as strange were the pictures she didn’t see. Danny was invisible. He didn’t exist in Fiona’s house. There was nothing to suggest that Fiona remembered her brother at all. It was like the Farrells were somehow two entirely separate families, the one in Lisa’s memory, where Danny had lived and died, and the one in this other universe, where Fiona was an only child.

  Someone else was missing, too.

  Fiona’s husband.

  Her left hand, so prominently displayed in the artsy photograph on the mantel, bore a simple gold band. She’d been married. And yet, like Danny, her husband was an invisible presence in the room. Every symbol of him and their married life had been erased. No pictures. No mementos of a wedding. No signs of a man in the house. A single woman lived here now.

  A single woman who was dead.

  Lisa looked around the room again, absorbing the details. Near a cherrywood end table, something small glistened on the lush carpet, like a diamond. When she went over there and bent down, she saw that it was a tiny shard of glass. There were a couple of other sparkling shards, too, buried in the pile immediately below the table. She noticed that the end table had a drawer, and using the tissue again, she opened the drawer.

  There was another picture frame hidden inside. This one was shattered. Glass filled the drawer like sharp popcorn. An eight-by-ten photograph sat amid the glass. It was a classic wedding photo, Fiona in her white dress, her husband next to her in his black tux. He was a tall, muscular man, with very short black hair and a nose that looked as if it had weathered multiple fights. His lips were bent into a smile that didn’t come naturally to his face. He had a hawk’s eyes, piercing and observant. Lisa knew the type. A lot of women would find this man sexy and irresistible, the he-man, the boxer in the ring. For Lisa, he was the kind of man who would have sent her running for the hills.

  Fiona had married him, but now he was a broken picture in her drawer. Lisa took the photograph, folded it up, and secreted it in her pocket along with the picture of the Farrells.

  She knew she should leave before anyone discovered her. She’d hoped that the house might show her some kind of connection between Fiona’s murder and Purdue’s appearance in her life, but there was nothing to be found. It was time to go. But something kept her in this place, something she wanted to walk away from but couldn’t. There was an echo of horror in the house. Like a ghost was screaming at her.

  She had never been here before, but it was almost as if she could see and hear what had happened in her head.

  The stairs to the second floor were on the far side of the living room, and the echoes drew her there. Near the base of the stairs, she found more broken shards, not of glass but of ceramic. The pieces of a vase lay on the floor. Above her, on the fifth step, was an evidence marker. Whatever had been there had been taken away by the police, but she saw an image in her mind of a woman’s high-heel pump, sleek and black, lying forlornly between upstairs and downstairs. Lisa felt her heart beating faster.

  She could picture the scene. In her imagination, she heard the thunder of running footsteps. A woman shouting. She heard the clatter of the vase tumbling to the floor; she saw Fiona escaping up the stairs and a man chasing her, grabbing her foot, coming away with a shoe.

  Lisa went up the stairs slowly. She grimaced at the images flooding her brain.

  At the top of the stairs, there was another evidence marker. She knew that was where the other heel had been stripped away in the chase. It pointed her toward a room at the end of the hall. This way. She saw a bedroom door, kicked in like the back door of the house, splinters of wood on the carpet. The doorway took her into the master bedroom, which was painted like a snow castle, all white, a king-size bed with a white comforter and white pillows, white curtains on the windows, white carpet. It looked like a winter fairyland, which was what made the other color so shocking.

  Red.

  There was blood everywhere. Blood on the bed, spatter on the walls and curtains, a vast crimson sea of blood in the middle of the carpet. Even closing her eyes, she could still see it. She could still smell it. Nausea rose in her throat.

  He’d caught up with her right here.

  Stabbed her.

  Killed her.

  28

  Lisa parked where she could see the building that housed the region’s weekly newspaper, the Thief River Falls Times. Light snow continued to fall from the gray sky, and as the temperature dropped, it was beginning to stick everywhere. She was glad to have it cover up the Camaro and keep it hidden. Every now and then she ran the wipers to clear a patch on the windshield where she could see. She checked her watch, which she’d already done a dozen times. It was nearly two in the afternoon. She hoped that Tom Doggett was still a creature of habit.

  Tom had been the newspaper’s editor for fifteen years. He’d had opportunities to go elsewhere to join an urban daily, but he’d chosen to stay in his hometown. As a journalist, he was tough and good. Dogged Doggett was his nickname, and he’d pissed off most of the movers and shakers in the county on various stories during his time with the paper. That was one reason Lisa trusted him. She didn’t think he’d go running to the sheriff or the county attorney as soon as he saw her.

  As long as she’d known Tom, he’d taken a smoke break every workday at exactly two in the afternoon. He smoked two cigarettes on the street, not caring about rain, snow, or cold, and then he was done with his vice for the day.

  Nervously, Lisa checked her watch again. It was exactly two now. As if an alarm had gone off, the glass door at the Times swung open, and Tom Doggett emerged into the snow with his pack of Marlboros in his hand. He walked to the street corner with a shuffling gait. He was medium height and a little heavy. He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, wrinkled khakis, and Hush Puppies. He was almost fifty years old, but he wore his wavy dark hair to his shoulders, as if he was still part of a protest movement. Lisa was never sure if he colored his hair or if he really hadn’t grayed yet.

  Before the editor could light up his first Marlboro, Lisa fired off a text.

  Camaro on 4th.

  Seconds later, she watched Tom dig into the pocket of his khakis for his phone. When he read the text, his head swiveled curiously. It didn’t take him long, despite the snow, to spot the chassis of the sports car halfway down the cross street. She watched his eyes narrow as he studied the car, wondering who was behind the mystery message. He tapped his hand rhythmically on his thigh as he assessed the situation, but she knew his journalistic curiosity would win out.

  Tom strolled across Main Avenue. A sheriff’s SUV passed behind him, and Lisa tensed, but the police car didn’t stop. The editor passed the gas-station-turned-church on the other side of the street and headed straight to the passenger door of the Camaro. He didn’t even knock. He simply opened the door and got in.

  “Lisa Power.”

  “Hi, Tom.”

  “Next time you want to see me, we need some better spy tradecraft. Like a chalk X on the light post alerting me to a secret meeting. I think we need code phrases to recognize each other, too. I’ll say, ‘Water is wet.’ You say, ‘Except on Mars.’ How does that sound?”

  She smiled. “Sorry. I know this is a little cloak-and-dagger.”

  “A little. Mind if I smoke?”

  “Would you care if I did?”

  “Hey, you know it’s two o’clock.”

  Tom used the button to lower the side window about a foot. He extracted the cream-colored end of a Marlboro from the pack and lit the top, causing the white tip to smolder. He inhaled, closed his eyes, and then aimed the smoke from his mouth at the open window. Lisa didn’t smoke, but she found the sight of the white cigarette strangely hypnotizing.

  “So what’s up?” Tom asked her. “Are you feeding me a story? It would be nice to have something a little juicier to work on than
the soybean futures.”

  “Actually, you already have the story,” Lisa said. “I’d like to find out what you know about it.”

  “In return for?”

  “My eternal gratitude,” Lisa replied.

  “Uh-huh. I can tell you the futures price on that. What’s the story?”

  “Fiona Farrell.”

  Tom whistled. “Oh, yeah, I know all about that one. But why do you care about Fiona?”

  “I’d rather not say right now. When I can tell you more, you’ll be the first to know. How’s that for a quid pro quo?”

  “I assume it’s the best I’m going to do. I’m not sure what you want, though. Everything I know about the case has already been printed in the paper.”

  “I’m behind on my reading. Sorry.”

  Tom gave Lisa a cynical stare from behind his cigarette. “All right. Well, here’s the story. You know what Denis Farrell is like. He kept his daughter under his thumb the way he did when she was still a kid. Fiona was looking for a way out. She decided that the fastest way to get free of Daddy was a guy named Nick Loudon.”

  “Buzzed black hair? Broken nose?”

  “That’s him. Fiona met Nick at a bar in Bemidji during a summer festival a couple of years ago. He’s a good-looking guy if you like that type, but nobody thought it was a good match. Least of all Denis. But you know how it goes. Girl gets emotional abuse from her father, then turns around and finds a man who makes it even worse. That was Nick Loudon.”

  “But they got married?”

  Tom nodded. “Yup. Last winter.”

  “Then what?”

  “The good times didn’t last long. Nick was a mean SOB when he was drunk, which was most of the time. He and Fiona started having fights. Bad ones. Neighbors kept calling the cops; cops kept pulling Nick in. Denis wanted Fiona to kick him out, but she wouldn’t do that. So the next time Nick got arrested, Denis made sure he cooled his heels in jail for a couple of days. He thought that might wise him up.”

  “I’m guessing it didn’t,” Lisa murmured.

  “Oh, no. Nick got out, came home, and put Fiona in the emergency room.”

  Lisa shook her head and swore under her breath. As a nurse, she’d seen that same movie play out over and over at the hospital. What was worse was seeing how many of the women went back to their abusers, because they had nowhere else to go. She pictured Fiona’s sweet face in her head from the photographs on her mantel, and she had no trouble imagining how that face had looked after Nick was done with her. She was angry on Fiona’s behalf, and for the first time in her life, she actually felt a little sorry for Denis Farrell.

  “This time Nick got two months in jail,” Tom went on. “Denis wanted Nick behind bars for a lot longer than that, but you know what the courts are like in these situations. Plus, I think the judge didn’t want to look like he was handing out a stiffer sentence because Denis was personally involved. Anyway, Nick went away to do his time, and Denis made sure Fiona got a restraining order and a divorce. When Nick got out in the middle of September, Denis had a sheriff’s car parked outside Fiona’s home day and night in case Nick decided to go after his ex-wife again. Except nothing happened. Nick left town. He got in his car, and according to the credit card receipts, he drove all the way to Florida. Delray. The family was pretty relieved to have him gone, you know? We all figured that was that.”

  Lisa closed her eyes. “That wasn’t that, was it?”

  “No,” Tom replied. He flicked his first cigarette out the car window. “That was definitely not that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ten days ago, Nick drove back to Thief River Falls. He parked a couple of blocks from Fiona’s place. Denis still had a cop outside—better safe than sorry—but Nick waited until the guy left the car to take a leak and swung a pipe into the cop’s skull. Knocked him out cold. Then he went after Fiona. She never even had time to call 911. He kicked in the back door, grabbed a butcher knife, and went after her. Neighbors heard screaming and called the cops, but by the time they got there, Nick was gone, and Fiona was dead in the bedroom. Seventy-plus stab wounds. I mean, he just went after her in a frenzy. Worst crime around here in decades. Maybe ever.”

  Lisa could see the blood on the carpet. The screams reverberated in her head. She could picture Fiona on her back, could see Nick over her with his arm flying up and down, blood spraying everywhere. It was as if she’d been there to witness the whole thing. She felt sick again.

  “They’re sure it was Nick who did it?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. Prints everywhere. On the knife. On the pipe where the cop was hit. Neighbors saw him running away, too.”

  “What happened to him?” Lisa asked. “Where did he go?”

  Tom shrugged. “That’s the million-dollar question. Your guess is as good as mine. The cops would love to find him, but he’s in the wind. They’ve been on the hunt for Nick ever since the murder.”

  “He’s missing?”

  “Yeah. He was on foot, too. The cops were all over his car, so he just ran. The sheriff put a squeeze around the whole town. I thought they would have nabbed him by now, but it’s been ten days, and there’s no sign of him. It’s hard to believe he could still be hiding in Thief River Falls, so I figure he managed to get through the dragnet and steal a car. He’s probably down in Florida again.”

  Lisa stared at the windshield, but it was almost completely covered in a light layer of snow. “I don’t think so,” she murmured.

  “No? You think he’s still around?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You got any particular reason to believe that?” he asked.

  Lisa didn’t answer, and Tom lit a fresh cigarette. Number two. The smoke stopped going out the window and settled over the Camaro’s interior like a cloud.

  “Well, you could be right,” Tom went on, when he realized she wasn’t going to say anything more. “Maybe Nick is still holed up somewhere around here. He can’t hide forever, though. And I’ll tell you one thing. Nick better hope that the cops catch him before Denis Farrell does. This was his daughter. Believe me, Denis is out for blood.”

  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 ph
otographs, 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?”