Thief River Falls

by Brian Freeman

  The two people who were with him wouldn’t stop talking. A mom and her teenage daughter. He’d already forgotten their names. As a general rule, Stan Erenstad didn’t really like people talking. That was one of the good things about working with the dead. They weren’t chatterboxes. He’d spent most of his sixty-three years living alone, with no one but a three-legged cat to keep him company for the past twelve years. He didn’t talk to the cat, and the cat didn’t talk to him, and that was a fine arrangement for both of them.

  “Tell the man what you saw, Katy,” Mom told the teenager, but then she didn’t give the girl a chance to say a word. “Katy came home two nights ago with this story about someone digging up a grave over here. To be honest with you, we thought she was making it up. Let’s just say it wouldn’t be the first time that someone’s imagination got a little ahead of the facts. When she was a girl, she had a story for everything, especially when she got into trouble. So when we caught her sneaking into her bedroom soaking wet, we weren’t convinced by this story about being out in the cemetery.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stan said.

  “Mom, I told you, I was worried about Willow!” the teenager broke in. She wore a green army jacket that swam on her skinny frame, and she had a multicolored wool hat pulled down to her eyebrows. “She had a really weird Snapchat post about going to the cemetery, and it freaked me out. I wanted to make sure she was okay.”

  “Well, this girl Willow is definitely an odd duck,” Mom agreed. “Sweet enough, but lost in her own world; do you know the type? Writers, I guess. She wants to be a poet, like you can make any money that way. Kids need to be practical in this day and age. Now quit dawdling, Katy, and tell him the story. Don’t waste the man’s time. We’re out here because of you. Like I said, my husband and I didn’t really believe this story of hers, but she came back home today and said she’d seen the same person in the same place back in the graveyard. She swore up and down she was telling the truth. That’s why we called. My husband golfs with the public works director, and he called him up and said we don’t really know that any of this is true, but it’s strange enough that someone should probably check it out.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stan said again.

  “It’s true,” the teenager insisted. “It really happened.”

  Stan stopped in the middle of the cemetery and didn’t hide his loud sigh. The two women kept going for a few steps before they realized he wasn’t with them, and then they turned back. Stan slipped his shovel off his shoulder and leaned on the post. The snow kept coming down, which was normally one of his favorite things, because snow had a way of quieting the whole world. He really enjoyed going out on his back porch at midnight during a snowfall and listening to a whole lot of nothing.

  “Okay, start over,” he said. “What the hell happened?”

  Mom opened her mouth to talk, but Stan held up his hand like a stop sign to silence her. “How about we let the girl tell it, okay?”

  The girl, Katy, kept eyeing different parts of the cemetery. Her multicolored hat made her look like a rainbow ice pop. “Well, two nights ago, I came out here to find my friend Willow. She wrote this cool poem called ‘Dance of the Dead,’ and she let me read it. It’s really good, but really creepy, because it’s about a girl who goes to a cemetery when she’s thinking of killing herself. So when Willow posted that she was coming out here, I got a little scared. I figured I’d go find her and make sure she was okay. I searched all over the cemetery, but I didn’t see Willow anywhere, so I decided to go back home. Except before I did, I heard something weird, like somebody digging, which is not the kind of noise you want to hear in a cemetery at night. That’s when I saw her.”

  “Who?” Stan asked.

  “That woman. The writer. Lisa Power. She was burying a body out here.”

  “Burying a body? You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, I’m sure! I saw her lift up the body in a sheet and put it in the ground and then start covering it up. I was thinking, wow, did she kill somebody or something? So I got out of there real fast. I told my parents, but they didn’t believe me, even though it happened just like I said. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since then. I figured I should do something, you know? That’s why I came back to the cemetery tonight. I wanted to see if I could find where she put the body.”

  “And what did you see?” Stan asked, before Mom could open her mouth.

  “I saw Lisa Power again! She was right back in the same place. She had a shovel with her, like she was going to dig up whoever she put in the ground.”

  “You’re sure it was Lisa Power both times? I mean, the first night you said it was raining pretty hard. Maybe it was somebody else.”

  Katy’s brow crinkled with annoyance. “No, it was her! I’m telling you, it was her! Everybody knows who she is. I figured she was coming back to get rid of the evidence. It was just the two of us out here, and she saw me, so I ran. I told my parents we had to do something right away. We had to get somebody out here to see what was going on.”

  “Well, we’re here,” Stan muttered, squinting into the snow. “You said this happened in the back of the cemetery?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, lead the way. You know where we’re going.”

  The teenager strutted forward, and Stan followed, with Mom bringing up the rear. He didn’t figure the search would take long, because he didn’t believe the story was true. This was going to be a wild goose chase. There was something about graveyards that had people seeing ghosts. It wasn’t the first time he’d been dragged out here at night over nothing. He was already anticipating getting back home and thawing out in his hot tub and opening up another beer and seeing what Gibbs was up to on NCIS. He just hoped the DVR had recorded it.

  They were nearly to the end of the cemetery, at the border of the woods, when the girl pointed her hand excitedly.

  “There! That’s the place right there!”

  Stan did a double take in surprise. The teenager was right. In the last row of graves, in front of an elaborate marble headstone, the ground had been disturbed. Despite the blanket of snow, it was clear that someone had been digging here. He didn’t know who or why, but there was no innocent explanation for anyone to be doing that without him knowing about it.

  When they got closer, he was able to read the headstone near the disturbed ground. It wasn’t for a recent burial. He checked the dates carved into the stone and saw that the grave under his feet was for a man who had died ten years earlier.

  A young man. Not even thirty years old.

  Stan always hated to see the young ones out here. He didn’t like to see lives cut short. He murmured the name on the headstone aloud.

  “Daniel Farrell.”

  A nickname was etched in the marble below. Danny.

  38

  Lisa had to avoid the police as she drove. They were at every bridge, every crossroad, watching for her like wolves in the snow. She felt trapped, forced to shift directions over and over. North, south, east, west, she couldn’t escape from Thief River Falls. When she ran out of options, she stopped in a downtown parking lot on First Street to decide what to do. The other cars around her shielded her from view, but she had nowhere to go. She could see the Red Lake River bridge from where she was, not even two blocks away, but she could also see a sheriff’s SUV parked up on the sidewalk near the water. Its flashing red lights were on, like a warning.

  As soon as he spotted the Camaro, the chase would begin.

  “Where are we going, Lisa?” Purdue asked from the passenger seat.

  She didn’t answer the boy right away. Her knee jerked nervously as she sat in the car, which grew cold as they stayed in the parking lot with the engine off. She chewed her fingernails, which she hadn’t done in years. She felt like a jigsaw puzzle breaking into pieces.

  “Lisa?”

  “I don’t know,” she told him finally. “I don’t know what to do. You’ll be safe if I can get you out of town, but I just don’t k
now how to do it. They’ve got us surrounded. I never should have fired that gun in Denis’s house. Now he has an excuse for them to fire back. Shoot first, ask questions later. He can send all the other cops at us, not just the ones in his pocket. Oh my God, I’m so stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid, Lisa. You rescued me, just like you said you would.”

  A sad smile took over her face. She looked at the boy sitting next to her. She felt an urge to reach out and straighten his long blond hair, which kept falling across his eyes. Those eyes. So smart, so blue, so curious. She realized how much he reminded her of Danny. It was amazing that she’d never noticed it before. The pictures she’d seen of Danny as a ten-year-old child could have been pictures of Purdue. Danny’s hair, Danny’s eyes, even some of Danny’s expressions when he looked at her. Thinking about it made her own eyes blur with tears.

  “Don’t cry, Lisa. I don’t like it when you cry.”

  “It’s just that . . . it’s just that I know I failed you, Purdue.”

  “But you didn’t. It’s not your fault. It’s me. You should just let me go.”

  “I’ll never do that. I can’t.”

  She squeezed her fists shut and prayed for deliverance. For escape. For rescue.

  And like a miracle, it came. The car window was streaked with wet snow, and when she lowered the window to see down the road, she spotted their salvation approaching from the west.

  A truck.

  A truck in the left lane heading for the First Street bridge.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  Lisa fired the engine. The Camaro growled, ready for action. She took a glance toward the police car on the bridge and hoped the cop at the wheel wouldn’t see her car as it crossed the street. There was no other way. She drove to the parking lot driveway and waited for the truck to pass, and with one quick burst of acceleration, she shot across the street into the right lane and took up position immediately next to the truck. She matched its speed as the two vehicles headed for the bridge.

  The police car was on the other side. If she was lucky, the only thing he would see was the truck, not the car in the lane next to it. The truck rumbled onto the flat span, going slowly. Lisa slowed, too. Slush poured from the truck’s tires and assaulted her windshield, and she had to run her wipers. On the other side of the concrete barrier, she could see the dark river water below them. She kept an eye on her mirror, expecting to see the flashing lights of the police car heading her way. But the ruse kept them out of sight.

  The bridge wasn’t wide. In a few seconds, they made it to the other side. The truck wanted to turn right, and the driver sounded his horn loudly, because Lisa was blocking him from the turn lane. She accelerated, shooting ahead of him and spinning around the turn onto Pennington Avenue. The truck followed, keeping her invisible to anyone behind them.

  This area of town was so familiar to her. She knew every block like the back of her hand. And yet it felt foreign. Thief River Falls was her enemy now, and she had to find a way out. She drove past the landmarks of her childhood, past the houses of people she knew, heading out into nothingness again. The buildings disappeared. So did the trees. Fields took over, stretching to the dark horizon. She drove and drove. South of town, the lights of the airport runways showed up on her right, and she saw a FedEx plane waiting for takeoff. It was always strange, seeing large planes here in this small corner of the world. She heard thunder as the plane slowly gathered speed, aiming for the snow and the sky.

  And still she drove, leaving everything behind. There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere, just her own headlights illuminating a small section of white pavement in front of her. She was out of town. They were free. Somehow she’d run the gauntlet and come out on the other side, and she could take the boy anywhere now. The sense of exhilaration filled her with joy.

  But her relief didn’t last long.

  A cross street loomed ahead of her. She knew where she was, County Highway 57, a misnomer for a little dirt road dropped down between the farm fields. She didn’t see the police car until it was too late. Its lights were off; it was nothing but a shadow parked on the shoulder. But he saw her. He couldn’t miss her. Lisa slammed hard on the brakes, and as she did, the flashing lights of the squad car came to life. The Camaro skidded on the slippery pavement, and when it came to a stop, it was facing east down the dirt road. She accelerated, kicking up snow and gravel, staying in the middle of the rural highway. The police car followed. It was right on her tail.

  “What’s going on?” Purdue asked, sensing her panic.

  “I think we’re getting to the end of the line,” Lisa said softly.

  She sped due east. Her world was narrowed to the white light in front of the Camaro. Everything else was dark. The police car stayed behind her, not trying to stop her or force her off the road, but she knew he was on his radio, calling in backup from every direction.

  The car thudded over railroad tracks, pushing her out of her seat. She spotted lights far off in the distance and heard the faint mournful cry of a whistle. A train was coming, only a few minutes away from the crossing. A train was heading north. To Canada.

  “You were on your way to Canada,” she said. “That’s why you came here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still want to see it?”

  “Sure, I do.”

  “Okay then.”

  That was her plan. Get the boy on the train. Let him jump on board, let him travel with the night to faraway places, let him be free. All she needed to do was buy him time. And really, there was no other plan available to her anymore, because as she approached the next crossroad not even a quarter mile away, she saw more red lights. Police cars had slanted across the highway, forming a barricade. She was blocked from the back and blocked from the front.

  Her headlights lit up a lonely building at the intersection. She saw a white tower and realized it was the steeple of a century-old Lutheran church, dropped down miles from anywhere. Her family had worshipped there. She remembered sitting in the wooden pews as a child and watching the light in the eyes of the people who stared at the altar. She remembered the minister talking about eternal life and wondering how anyone could really live forever.

  It wasn’t a large building, just the steeple and the slanted gray roof and a trio of windows on the walls of the small sanctuary. Evergreens made a U around the back of the building, creating a little grove that separated the church from the cornfield that butted up against it. There were no lights on inside. She had the strange thought that God wasn’t home.

  The police had the cross street blocked in front of the church, so Lisa spun the wheel hard. The Camaro swerved onto the shoulder and took flight across a shallow ravine where dead weeds grew out of the snow. The bumper hit the other slope, jarring their bodies with the impact, and then the wheels chewed into the ground and climbed from the valley with a roar. She turned the wheel again, feeling the car spin. She hit the brakes and jerked the Camaro to a stop just outside the church’s white front doors.

  “Inside,” she shouted to Purdue. “Get inside right now!”

  The boy ran for the church door. Lisa popped the release on the trunk and bolted from the car with the pistol in her hand. She pointed into the sky and fired. The noise of the gunshot froze everything around her. The police car that had been chasing her slammed to a stop, jerking across the highway. She saw the doors of two other police cars opening on the other side of the intersection. Spotlights swung her way, bathing her in white light.

  “Stay there!” she screamed into the wind. “Don’t come any closer!”

  She could hear other sirens. More cars were coming. And somewhere out there she heard the whistle of the train again. The back door of the church led toward the evergreens and from there into the cornfield and from there to the railroad tracks. All she needed to do was give Purdue a chance. A chance to run. A chance to disappear like one small shadow into the night, where the police would never find him. Get on the train. Go to a new lif
e.

  It was an escape he had to make alone. Without her.

  She would stay here, giving him cover. She would hold off the police until he was gone. Then they could do what they wanted with her. Nothing mattered once the boy was safe.

  Lisa ran to the trunk and threw it open. She gathered up everything that was inside into her arms.

  The assault rifle. The ammunition. An arsenal to hold them at bay.

  She took it all with her and followed Purdue into the church.

  39

  Almost two dozen police cars staked out the two roads that made an L at the lonely corner outside the church. A handful of cops with guns drawn roamed the barren cornfields behind the trees. Intersecting lights from two sides erased the shadows and turned the black night to day. The evergreens bent as the wind blew, and waves of snow continued to pour through the light.

  Denis Farrell was at the scene. So was the sheriff, who was on the front line with his officers. The media had heard the overlapping calls on the police radios, and they were on the other side of a perimeter a hundred yards away. Gawkers had begun to show up in the fields as rumors of the standoff went viral around town.

  The mayor of Thief River Falls was there, too.

  “Have we tried calling the church phone?” he asked Denis in a reedy voice. The mayor was a genial man in his sixties, with two little flaps of gray hair on his balding head. His black glasses were coated in snow. He kept taking them off and wiping them and shaking his head in disbelief at what was going on around him. “I mean, has anyone been able to reach her?”

  “We called the church phone and Lisa’s cell phone,” Denis replied. “She’s not answering either one.”

  “Well, there has to be someone who knows her, isn’t there? The woman grew up in this town, for God’s sake. We have to have someone who can talk a little sense into her.”