Spilled Blood (22 page)

‘Punished? For what?’

‘For the cancer cluster. I’m sure she believed God was taking her baby, the way He took Kimberly and the others.’

‘Their deaths had nothing to do with her,’ Chris said.

‘Maybe so, but tell that to Ashlynn. That was one of the reasons she first came to me for spiritual counsel. She was convinced that the cancer cluster in St. Croix was real. She was convinced that her father’s company was causing it.’

Florian Steele stood on the sprawling porch of his cliff-side home. He swirled Stags’ Leap chardonnay in a bell-shaped glass. Leaning on the balcony, he watched the rocky promontory of the bluff descend below him into a nest of trees. From where he stood, he could see the town of Barron and the stark white headquarters of Mondamin. For ten years, the company had been his dream. His life. He had built it from nothing, and for the first time, a decade of labor felt utterly empty.

He heard Julia behind him. Her heels were unmistakable. His wife stood next to him at the balcony, and he stole a glance at her. She was perfectly put together, as she always was. The cross on her neck. The pinned-up blond hair. The rose dress hanging as if it were cut to her figure, which it was. Her back stiff and proud. He had been married to her for nearly twenty years, and there were days when he didn’t understand her at all.

‘There’s something wrong with us that we can’t cry,’ he said.

Julia didn’t look at him. ‘I know exactly what I’ve lost. I don’t need tears to grieve for her.’

‘I do.’

His wife brushed a stray hair from her eyes. She was impatient with him. ‘Maybe you can’t cry because you feel guilty. Did you think about that?’

‘Olivia Hawk is guilty. Not me.’

‘Maybe Olivia is simply the instrument that God chose to punish us.’

Florian scowled. ‘I don’t need a Bible lecture from you, Julia. Ashlynn’s death is not my fault.’

He slugged down the rest of his wine. He didn’t want to have this argument with her. He was tired of feeling angry when he should have been crying his eyes out. What made it worse was that Julia was right. He felt guilty. He had let Ashlynn drift out of his life without fighting to get her back. His precious little girl had begun to treat him like an enemy.

He left the porch. Inside the patio doors was the family room, rustic and huge, with a vaulted ceiling and a fieldstone fireplace. It was his room. His space. Everything else had been designed and selected by Julia, even the décor of his Mondamin office. He’d insisted on one place for himself. Dead animal heads – deer and moose, even a bear he’d shot near Grand Marais – adorned the wall. If you were a Minnesota CEO in farm country, you had to hunt. It was part of the job description. Florian had never hunted as a child, but like his other endeavors, he had researched it, practiced it, and became expert at it. Ashlynn had joined him once when she was ten. She was a natural with a perfect eye. After her first kill, though, she’d cried for hours and never hunted with him again.

Ashlynn. His little girl. Gone. There were still no tears to squeeze from his eyes. He was a void.

Florian sat on the stone hearth. Julia wandered inside and adjusted the angle of the paintings on the wall like a slave to her obsessive-compulsive ways. He resented her presence, and he hated himself for it. They’d turned on each other since Ashlynn’s death. She blamed him, and he blamed her. He felt as if his wife had been a co-conspirator in turning his daughter against him. It was ironic. In the early years, he’d been the one to put Ashlynn to bed and sing lullabies to her. He wondered if his daughter even remembered those days. As she got older, though, things changed. He ran out of time as the business demanded more and more of
his attention. Ashlynn became Julia’s child, molded in his wife’s image, graceful and beautiful.

‘Why did you lie to me?’ he asked his wife.

Julia stopped with her hand on the frame of a watercolor of the Spirit River. ‘About what?’

‘You knew Ashlynn was seeing Johan Magnus.’

‘She asked me not to tell you about it, and I didn’t. That’s not a lie.’

‘I wanted to know if she was seeing anyone.’

‘You wanted to know if she was seeing
Kirk
,’ Julia said. ‘I told you no.’

‘George Valma told me that Maxine saw Ashlynn and Kirk together near the school. I was concerned.’

‘You mean you were concerned what Kirk might tell her.’

‘Damn it, Julia!’ Florian shouted, his face flushing. He rose unsteadily, feeling the effects of two-thirds of a bottle of wine. ‘I don’t want to talk about Kirk!’

Julia’s pointed look made him feel like an insect. Everyone thought of him as a tower of strength at Mondamin. If only they knew the truth. Julia ruled the house. Julia ruled him.

‘You’re still paying him, aren’t you?’ she asked.

He didn’t say anything. That was enough to give her an answer.

‘Forget Kirk,’ he said. ‘This is about Ashlynn and Johan. You didn’t see any problem with her dating him?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You should have known that he and his father would brainwash her. They’d turn her against me.’

‘Ashlynn didn’t need Johan for that, Florian. Her relationship with him had nothing to do with you. He’s a handsome, decent boy. Ashlynn was in love with him, and from everything I saw, he loved her, too. I was
not
going to let you come between them. She was perfectly capable of making up her own mind.’

‘You should have told me,’ he repeated.

‘What would you have done? Would you have had Kirk pay him a visit? Isn’t that how you solve your problems?’

‘Shut up, Julia.’

‘I heard about the assault on Olivia Hawk. Was your hand in that?’

‘No! How can you say that? How can you think I would be part of something like that?’

‘I think you sold your soul a long time ago, Florian. It’s a little late to start talking about morality.’

‘I had nothing to do with it,’ he insisted. ‘I want to see Olivia Hawk in jail. That’s all.’

‘If she killed our girl, God will punish her.’

‘If? What do you mean by that?’

Julia ran a fingernail slowly along the line of her chin. ‘We don’t know exactly what happened.’

‘Maybe you don’t, but I do.’

‘I’m having doubts.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why?’

‘Because I thought I knew everything about Ashlynn, and now I realize I was wrong. She shut me out of the most intimate part of her life.’

‘Are you saying you really didn’t know she was pregnant? She didn’t tell you?’

‘No, she didn’t. I knew something was wrong. She was different. I should have been more attuned.’

‘I assumed you were simply keeping it from me.’

‘I’m not saying I would have told you if I knew.’

‘Naturally.’

‘I don’t know what to believe anymore,’ Julia said. ‘Ashlynn didn’t trust me with the most difficult decision she’d ever faced. She went and did something she knew I would find abhorrent.’

‘Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘She knew what you’d say. Or maybe she figured it was none of your business. You
said it yourself. She was perfectly capable of making up her own mind.’

‘Not about this.’

‘You can’t have it both ways, Julia.’

His wife looked as if she would fire back at him, but she didn’t. Her icy face bled into sorrow, and he thought the religious calm she affected would finally break into tears. It didn’t. She held herself in check, stiffening her resolve. With Julia, it was like God was holding a dam back. With him, it was as if he were alone in a giant dark space.

Julia poured herself a glass of wine. That told him how upset she was, in the places where she didn’t invite him. She rarely drank. She took a sip, twisted her mouth at the sharpness, and came and sat next to him.

‘There are days when I hate what we’ve become,’ she murmured.

‘Don’t you think I feel that way, too?’

‘I don’t know what you feel anymore.’

‘I loved her,’ Florian said.

‘I loved her more than anything else in my life. Except maybe you.’

Julia didn’t melt at the compliment. ‘Thank you for saying that, but Ashlynn and I have always been fourth on your list. There’s Mondamin, money, and yourself. Then us.’

‘That’s not true. It’s never been about money, and I’ve never done this for myself. I started Mondamin to make a difference.’

‘Oh, don’t be noble. You started Mondamin to build a mountain. You wanted to be king. I don’t blame you for that, Florian. I knew you were going to be rich and do great things. God had big plans for you. I wanted to be a part of them. Did I complain when you dragged me to this wasteland? Did I tell you not to work eighteen hours a day? No. Never a word.’

‘I know you made sacrifices,’ he said. ‘So did I.’

‘Sacrifices didn’t bother me. I believed in you. I believed in what you were doing at Mondamin.’

He could see the truth in her eyes. She didn’t believe in him now. ‘What changed?’

Julia got up without finishing her wine. ‘Maybe I began to see you through Ashlynn’s eyes.’

He felt as if she’d run him through with a sword. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means my baby girl is dead,’ she replied in a rising voice, ‘and I’m bitter at God, and I’m bitter at you. But God isn’t here right now, and you are. So you’re the one I blame. I always knew there would be a price to pay, but I never dreamed it would be so high.’

He shook his head. ‘If it helps you to lay her death at my feet, fine, but it’s not my fault.’

‘Are you sure? The pregnancy wasn’t the only thing she was keeping from us, Florian. There was more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I found her in your downstairs office a couple of weeks ago.’

‘What was she doing there?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t interrupt her.’

‘You should have told me,’ he said. ‘Or you should have talked to her.’

‘She obviously didn’t want us to know.’

‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘No? Last fall, she asked me about Vernon Clay, too,’ Julia told him.

Florian tensed. He’d hoped never to hear that name again. He certainly never wanted to hear it on Ashlynn’s lips. ‘What about him?’

‘She wanted to know what he did for you at Mondamin. She wanted to know what happened to him.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said he was a scientist who used to work for you. He left town years ago.’

‘Why was she asking about him?’

‘Why do you think? She suspected something.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Don’t be so sure. Ashlynn was a smart girl, Florian.’ His wife marched toward the kitchen, but she stopped in the doorway and fingered the cross on her neck. ‘This man Aquarius seems to know a lot about us, too.’

‘Don’t worry about him.’

‘I’ve been wondering. What if it’s Vernon? What if he’s back?’

‘He’s not. It’s not him.’

‘How do you know? Vernon was insane enough to do this. The notes sound like him.’

‘Aquarius is not Vernon Clay. He’s just another nut from the anarchist fringe and nothing more.’

‘This one is different,’ Julia said. ‘His notes feel different. You know what I think? I think he plans to kill us.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘Maybe he already started. Did you think about that? Maybe he started with Ashlynn.’

Florian pushed himself off the hearth and stabbed a finger at his wife. ‘Don’t talk like that. You’re giving Chris Hawk exactly what he wants. All you’re doing is helping Olivia get away with murder. Aquarius had nothing to do with Ashlynn’s death. Nothing.’

Julia shook her head. ‘I’m not so sure, Florian. There’s a part of me that thinks Aquarius was sent here by God on a special mission to punish us. He was sent to wash us away like we never existed.’

The fields surrounding Rollie Swenson’s house hadn’t been plowed in years. The dormant acres had been reclaimed by prairie. The red barn was a relic, its walls bowing, its roof near collapse. A tractor sat in the lawn, swallowed by mud and rust, as if it had been driven out of the corn rows one day and left to fend for itself against the elements. The long brown grass of the yard was dotted with last season’s fallen leaves, blown from the river bank on the other side of the highway.

Chris parked next to a Chevy Tahoe near the house. It was dusk. Lights were on downstairs and upstairs, and the screened windows were open, letting in the evening breeze. He got out and heard barking. A white Westie terrier shot from the porch and ran around him in frantic circles. He squatted to rub its head, but the dog was too busy to stop for attention. It snorted and charged for the deck and sniffed its way along the foundation.

‘He’s always flushing rabbits and mice,’ Rollie Swenson called from the porch. The Barron lawyer had a can of Miller Lite in his hand. ‘He chases planes, too, when they fly overhead. I guess he figures they might land here.’

‘You can’t be too careful,’ Chris said with a smile.

‘Well, we haven’t had a plane land in the yard since he started going after them. That can’t be a coincidence.’ Rollie winked and wandered down the steps. He wore jeans and an untucked gray turtleneck that was snug on his stocky chest. ‘Welcome to the Swenson family farm.’

Chris heard the irony. ‘I take it you’re not getting ready for spring planting.’

‘I told you, calloused hands aren’t my style. I could lease the fields, but I don’t want diesel motors waking me up at five in the morning.’

‘This was your parents’ place?’ he asked.

‘And my grandparents’ place and my great-grandparents’ place. The Swenson dynasty ends with me. Hopefully, Tanya will wise up and move to the city.’ He held up his can of beer. ‘You want one?’

‘No, thanks.’

Rollie took a swig of beer and admired the Lexus. ‘Nice car, but not too practical out here. This is truck country. You want something that takes out a deer on the highway like a speed bump.’ He added, ‘How’s Olivia?’

‘Physically, she’s better than I feared. We’ll see how she does in the next few weeks.’

‘That’s good. Tanya wanted to visit her, but I had to tell her not to do that.’