Thief River Falls

by Brian Freeman

  You are not going to die, my sweet.

  But Lisa felt as if she really were about to die. No, that wasn’t even it. She wanted to die. She wanted to escape, to be done, to have this burden lifted from her heart. It was too much.

  The door to the hospital room slid open.

  The light went on, making Lisa wince at the brightness. Someone stood in the doorway, and it took her a few seconds to focus on who it was.

  Laurel.

  Laurel was here.

  She wore her street clothes, so she didn’t look like a doctor. She came into the hospital room and shut the door behind her. The two of them were alone. She took a seat on the long bench near the window on the other side from where Lisa was sitting. Seeing Laurel made Lisa want to run, but part of her also wanted to know what she would say to defend herself.

  How do you justify betraying a friend?

  “You don’t look good, Lisa,” Laurel said.

  “No?”

  “No, you don’t. You’re sweating. You’re having trouble breathing. By the looks of it, I’d say you were having a panic attack.”

  “I don’t need your diagnosis, Dr. March. I don’t need anything from you.”

  Laurel let that remark sit there without challenging it. She kept staring at Lisa the way she always did, with her mind running in the background, showing nothing on her face. She was always so calm, so unflappable, so perfect with her hair in place and her long neck making her look like some kind of queen on the throne. Bombs could be falling around her, and her face would have that same expression.

  “Do you want me to give you something to relax you?” Laurel asked patiently. “When did you last sleep?”

  “If I sleep, where will I wake up? Underground, like Purdue? Or will I not wake up at all?”

  “You’ll wake up right here,” Laurel replied. “I promise you, nothing will happen.”

  “Forgive me if your promises don’t mean shit to me right now, Laurel.”

  Laurel didn’t react to Lisa’s cursing. She removed a pen from the pocket of her suit and rolled it rhythmically between her fingers. She had the look of a chess player who was trying to figure out the best move.

  “Curtis is okay, by the way,” Laurel told her. “In case you were concerned about that. There’s no skull fracture and no concussion. Just a lump the size of an orange on his skull. You remember hitting him, don’t you?”

  “I remember him plotting to have the police kidnap me and Purdue at the airport,” Lisa replied.

  Laurel shook her head. “We need to end this. It has to stop, Lisa.”

  “It stops when Denis Farrell admits what he did. And when you admit what you did.”

  “What did I do?” Laurel asked.

  “Two nights ago. That woman from the trailer park took the boy to the hospital and flagged down a doctor in the parking lot. It was you, wasn’t it? You told her you’d take care of everything. How did you manage to get the boy inside without any record of it? Did someone help you? Wilson Hoke is the administrator here. He’s in Denis’s back pocket, always playing politics with the county board. Did Hoke find a way to keep this whole thing off the books?”

  Laurel said nothing. She still had that same patient, infuriating look on her face.

  “And then what?” Lisa went on. “What happened next, Laurel? How did it go wrong? Did you call Denis to tell him you had the boy? Did Purdue hear you talking on the phone?” Lisa nodded toward the window and the bright green EXIT sign outside. “He slipped out the back door, didn’t he? There was a delivery truck parked out there, and he hopped on board. You lost him. That’s when everybody really started to panic.”

  Lisa studied the parking lot again. Out past the fields, she could see cars on the highway. She was no fool. Deputies Garrett and Stoll would be arriving any minute to take her away.

  “You think you can put the genie back in the bottle, but you can’t,” she told Laurel. “It’s all going to come out. Do you really believe no one here knows about Purdue? The rumors are all over town, Laurel. People are talking about the boy who disappeared from the hospital. You think you can wave a magic wand and make people forget about that? What about the woman from the trailer park who brought Purdue here in the first place? Do you think she’s going to let it go? She’ll be back asking questions, just like me. She’ll recognize you. Everything has gone too far, Laurel. You can’t wish this away.”

  Laurel kept playing with her pen. “Yes, you’re right. I’ve let this go too far.”

  “Then do the right thing and come with me,” Lisa urged her. “We’ll pick up Purdue, we’ll drive to Minneapolis. We’ll find Will at the FBI, and you can tell him what happened. About Denis, Fiona, Nick Loudon, about what they tried to do to the boy. Look, I don’t know what influence Denis has over you, but I know how he controls and manipulates people. It’s time to make it stop. It’s time to fight back.”

  She could see Laurel’s mind working fast. Laurel was smart. She’d always been smart. “Where do we pick up Purdue?” she asked. “Where is he, Lisa?”

  Her friend said it so smoothly that Lisa almost trusted her again and walked right into the trap. She opened her mouth to say something, and then she snapped it shut again and closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “Oh, Laurel, why are you doing this?”

  “I know you were at your parents’ house today,” Laurel went on. “Is that where you’re hiding the boy?”

  Lisa’s eyes flew open, giving away the truth. “How do you know that?”

  “You were seen, Lisa. You of all people should know that everyone recognizes you around here. You think you can come and go without the town knowing about it? Your next-door neighbor spotted you, and she called someone in her book club. As it happens, that was me.”

  “When? How long ago?”

  “Enough time to send people over there,” Laurel replied. “If he’s there, we’ll find him. That’s the way it has to be.”

  Lisa’s voice was a low, angry hiss of despair. “You bitch. We’re talking about a ten-year-old boy.”

  “Settle down, Lisa. Don’t upset yourself any further. Why don’t you let me get you that medication? You need to relax.”

  But Lisa was already on her feet. She wasn’t going to wait to be taken in, and she wasn’t going to give up on a boy she’d sworn to rescue. She had to get home and see if Purdue had hidden in the crawl space. She needed to know if he was still there, or if the police had found him and taken him away from her.

  Laurel stood up, too, blocking the way to the door.

  “Stay here, Lisa. Please. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  When Laurel didn’t move, Lisa shoved her aside with a strength she didn’t even know she had. She yanked open the door to the hospital room and ran for the rear exit just a few feet away. The white world welcomed her back as she crashed through the door into the blizzard of snow. Driven by adrenaline, she sprinted for the Camaro. Inside the car, she fired the engine, making the tires screech as she sped through the slush.

  Lisa reached the highway and turned north. When she glanced in her rearview mirror, she saw the red lights of a squad car arriving at the hospital parking lot. They were looking for her, but they were too late.

  She left the hospital far behind as she drove into the night.

  35

  The ruts in the snow at her parents’ house told her the story.

  The tire tracks were fresh. Lisa could see where the police car had parked, and she could see the boot marks where they’d gone to and from the doors in the front and back. She could see it all in her mind so clearly that she wished she could claw out her eyes. Deputy Garrett at the front door, Deputy Stoll at the back. The two of them storming into the house, hunting upstairs and downstairs, coming outside with a boy squirming in their grasp.

  Tell me you made it to the basement, Purdue.

  Tell me they didn’t find you.

  Lisa didn’t bother hiding the Camar
o this time. She parked at the curb and ran for the door. It was all darkness around her, no lights to be seen. She went inside the house, and she could smell the presence of strange men. The air was cold. Everything was still. Her eyes adjusted, and she could make out familiar shapes, things she’d known for decades. But nothing moved inside the house where she’d grown up. No one made a sound. No one was here. Even the ghosts of her family stayed away and left her alone.

  “Purdue?” she called.

  Her voice broke and grew plaintive. “Purdue, are you here?”

  She knew where she had to go. The basement. If he was still here, that was where he would be. She didn’t even bother with the flashlight on her phone as she made her way in the dark. The house guided her by feel, by years of experience. She found the old basement door that never quite closed right, and it squealed as she opened it. There was a light switch by the stairs, but she left it off. She didn’t want light; she didn’t want anything that was white. Darkness was fine. She took the stairs one at a time, descending underground, feeling the air grow even icier around her. Down here, there was no light at all. None. It was a black box, a coffin, a grave where you could be buried forever.

  She inched toward the foundation wall.

  As she did, echoes of her childhood caught up with her. She could hear the whisper of Noah’s voice as they played the game and the heavy footsteps of their brothers upstairs, hunting for them.

  “Where are we going, Lis?”

  “I found a hiding place. It’s the best hiding place ever. They’ll never find us here.”

  “But where is it?”

  “In the crawl space. Behind Mom’s boxes.”

  “No! I don’t like it there. It’s too dark.”

  “Big baby, there’s nothing to be scared of in the dark.”

  That had been a long time ago. Lisa had learned since then that there were plenty of things to be scared of in the dark.

  “Purdue,” she called. “It’s me. It’s Lisa. I’m here—it’s safe to come out.”

  No one answered.

  “Purdue. Please. Answer me, my sweet. Tell me you’re here.”

  The basement was silent. As silent as a tomb. She had no choice now; she had to turn on the flashlight and fill the walls with a harsh white light. She lit up an old wooden chair. She lit up plastic bins stuffed with old clothes. She lit up children’s games and books and broken fans and the dull steel of the furnace, and finally, she lit up the dirty concrete blocks of the foundation and the dark gap below the floorboards. She saw the boxes where Madeleine had written Noël.

  She walked right up to the boxes and shined her light into the blackness. “Purdue?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t there. She knew he wasn’t there, but she began to yank out the Christmas boxes anyway, ripping them from their places and dropping them on the floor, hearing the tinkle of glass as fragile ornaments broke. She was destroying her past, destroying what she had left of Madeleine, but she tore away every box until the crawl space was vacant. Until she could see the entire hiding place, where she’d huddled with Noah. The jutting nails in the floorboards that had ripped her clothes. The knots in the wood. The message scrawled in her childish hand on one of the boards in red marker: Lisa and Noah were here.

  Empty.

  The crawl space was empty. They’d taken him.

  Lisa sank down onto the cold floor. She turned off the flashlight and sat in the total darkness. She couldn’t see anything, and all she could hear was the sound of her hopeless sobbing. She cried and cried. She’d failed Purdue. She’d made this boy a promise, and she’d gone back on her word. She’d sworn to keep him safe, and now he was gone forever.

  She had no idea how long she sat there. Her skin was frozen to the touch. She cried until she ran out of tears. She had thought the Dark Star that took away her family was the deepest, loneliest galaxy she would ever visit, but somehow, this was even worse. She felt in a trance. And she knew where she had to go, what she had to do. It was as if, for the past two years, there had been a sharpshooter poised near her, taking out the people in her life one by one.

  Until there was only one target left.

  One more bullet that needed to be fired.

  Lisa got off the cold floor. She staggered back to the stairs, still in darkness, and made her way through the family house. First floor. Then the second floor. She was barely aware of what she was doing before she found herself in her parents’ bedroom, with the closet door open. She stared at the metal rod stretching from wall to wall. She remembered opening the door that awful day, seeing her father hanging there, remembered screaming and screaming, unable to do anything but scream until Noah found her and dragged her away.

  That old belt. That old brown belt he’d used. How many times had she seen him slip it through the loops in his corduroys? That old belt eventually became a killer.

  Lisa had a belt, too.

  She undid the buckle and took it off. It dangled from her hand, the hangman’s noose. She knew how to do it, but then, she was an expert, because the picture of her father’s face in the closet was burned into her memory. She could see exactly how the belt had been looped over the rod and tightened around his neck.

  I failed you, my sweet.

  She could feel them around her now. The ghosts. Gerald. Anton. Charles. Samuel. Madeleine. And Danny. There was room in the cemetery for another plot beside him. She took a confident step into the closet and swung her belt over the high rod. She needed a chair, and there was a makeup chair in the bedroom, so she dragged it into the closet with her.

  Lisa climbed onto the chair and rested on her knees.

  The belt was right there, waiting for her. All she had to do was tighten the loop around her throat and kick away the chair. Yes, she would struggle. People always did. It was an instinct. But that wouldn’t last long.

  She felt strange. She’d expected the ghosts to be happy with her decision. She’d expected to see their arms wide open, welcoming her, smiling, laughing, everyone together again. A dance of the dead. Instead, all she could see were shadows where their faces should be and hear them calling like the whistle of the wind through the old windows. Nooooooooooo. That was what they said. That was what the wind said.

  No.

  Lisa knelt on the chair for a long, long time, but eventually, she realized she couldn’t do it. She put the chair back. She retrieved her belt and strung it back around her waist. Then she sat on her parents’ bed and wondered what to do. Her whole soul was consumed by emptiness, and she needed to fill it somehow. She needed to do something.

  She found herself saying aloud, “Noah, I need you.”

  It took her by surprise. Then she said it one more time, and she realized she was crying again.

  “Noah, I need help.”

  But that was foolish. Her brother wasn’t here, and her brother wasn’t going to help her. She could only help herself. And the way to do that was to keep her promise. She had to find Purdue.

  She had to rescue him, even if it meant giving up her own life in the process.

  Lisa got off the bed and wiped the tears from her face. She went back downstairs, sure of herself, sure of what she needed to do. She grabbed Madeleine’s coat and went out of the house into the snow, not even bothering to close the door behind her. The Camaro waited for her, already shrouded by white again as the snow kept falling.

  Tell me where you are, Purdue.

  But she knew. A thriller writer always knew where the plot would take her next. If Garrett and Stoll had carried the boy out of her house, they wouldn’t have taken him back to the cemetery. That plan was dead. No, they had to come up with another plan, and that meant going to the man in charge.

  They would take Purdue to Denis Farrell.

  She’d find the boy there. At his house.

  Lisa hiked through the snowy front yard to the car, but before she got inside, she went to the trunk of the Camaro and opened it up. What she needed was right there, a gift from Shyl
a.

  A fully loaded Glock.

  Lisa took the pistol and caressed it in her hands. Then she shoved it into her coat pocket and steeled herself for war.

  Noah, I need help.

  He heard those words in his head as clear as a church bell. His sister was reaching out to him. Part of him was glad, but another part of him feared that Lisa had to be in the darkest of holes to turn to him for support. He knew what that was like. He knew how far down a soul could go, and he hated to think of Lisa—who’d always been the stronger one between them—suffering what he’d been through.

  Noah emptied every other thought from his mind until it was as wide open as the flat nighttime fields bordering the highway. Then he concentrated on sending his sister a message. I’m coming to you, Lis.

  He didn’t expect an answer.

  The rural roads around him were deserted. The night was pure black, with only his headlights to illuminate the highway ahead of him. Snow chased from one side to the other like a ghost. Up here, Canada inhaled and then blew its icy breath across the northern plains. Noah pushed the accelerator down, driving faster. The car was silent. No radio. Nothing to distract him. He needed to hear, to listen, to let Lisa in.

  Where was she? What was she going to do?

  One thing he knew about his sister. She would always sacrifice herself for someone else, no matter the cost. Noah remembered the last drive he’d taken with Danny, when they drove five hours to the Minneapolis airport for his flight to California. He knew Lisa wanted Danny to stay, but he also knew she wouldn’t say a thing to change his mind. She had the power. She could have made him stay with two words, but she put his needs ahead of her own.

  In the car, he’d asked Danny, “What if Lisa told you, ‘Don’t go’?”