Brian Freeman - Spilled Blood

Hannah gave him a smile that was unusually warm. ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Take your time.’

She closed the door, leaving him alone. He found himself daydreaming about the past, remembering Hannah. The woman in the doorway was the same woman he had met in college. Time didn’t matter; she was still the girl in the tie-dye shirt and sweat pants, who nursed abused dogs at the Humane Society, who screamed at politicians at the state fair, who drove four hours to swing sand bags at the Red River, who made love until sweat covered their bodies. He was the one who had changed, not her. In the early years, he’d been an idealist, like her. Young. Naïve. The crappy apartment in Uptown was fine. Mac and cheese was the best dinner on earth. They both worked in a South Minneapolis urban center, the lawyer and the psychologist, out to rescue their corner of the world. They laughed, they fought, they made up. They were happy.

Olivia changed everything. He held that fragile baby in his arms, and he got scared. He grew up; he got older. Barely getting by wasn’t enough anymore. Other people, other causes, didn’t matter; only that little girl mattered to him. He made a bargain with Hannah, and neither of them realized at the time that it was a devil’s bargain. She stayed home with their daughter, and he went to work. Real work. Lawyer’s work. He made money and played the game. He moved them out of Uptown and west to the exclusive lakeshore suburbs. In the early years, he thought he was building a fortress, but it was really a maze. Eventually, he lost Hannah in it.

The door opened again. She stood there, waiting for him. Behind her, the office was empty. There was a rear entrance that she used to make it easier for women to come and go in secret, and the woman in the lobby had slipped away. It was just the two of them. Hannah stared at him in silence, and he stared back. It felt to Chris as if she could read his mind and see that he had been reliving their years together, the highs and the lows. Her face had a sweet sadness. He stood up, and she came to him and quietly put her arms around his chest.

‘Thank you, Chris,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For being here. For saving her. I married a good man.’

He said nothing. It felt like the first scar over an old wound, and he didn’t want to risk breaking it open by saying the wrong thing.

They stayed in the lobby in the dim, dusty light. She sat down next to him and played nervously with the shade of an old lamp. Her hand trembled with little involuntary spasms. He saw weakness and fatigue in her pale face. Even Hannah had her limits. Fighting Mondamin. Fighting cancer. Fighting the violence that had swept Olivia up in its currents. There was a point at which you simply wanted to throw yourself into the wave and get carried away.

‘I never wanted to kill anyone before last night,’ she said. ‘If I’d had a gun, I would have shot every one of those bastards.’

He thought: I have a gun. In a few hours, it would be dark, and he would have to make a choice.

‘We’ll get them,’ he said.

‘Does it matter?’ she asked. ‘We can’t unring the bell for Olivia.’

‘No, but we can get justice.’

Hannah grimaced and sucked in her breath. Her eyes closed. Chris put a hand on her shoulder and leaned closer. ‘Are you okay?’

‘There are good days and bad days. This is a bad day.’

‘I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can—’

Hannah stopped him with a finger on his lips. The smallest touch of her skin was sensual. ‘Please don’t. Don’t say it. You’re already worried about Olivia. You don’t have to worry about me, too.’

‘I do anyway.’

‘I didn’t ask you here to take care of me.’

‘That doesn’t mean I can’t,’ he said.

Hannah offered a small smile of surrender. ‘I know. Thank you.’

‘Do you mind if I ask you something? You don’t have to tell me, but I’m curious.’

‘What is it?’

‘Glenn Magnus told me he was interested in you, and you turned him down. Why?’

‘Glenn shouldn’t have told you that,’ she replied, frowning.

‘Maybe not, but why? You obviously care for him.’

‘I wasn’t ready.’

Chris was surprised to see her look away and cover her face. In trying to be tender, he felt as if he had said the most hurtful thing imaginable. His temptation was to reach for her, but he resisted it. Instead, he got up and took a box of tissues from the coffee table and handed it to her.

‘I guess we should avoid certain topics,’ he said.

Hannah sniffled and nodded. ‘I guess.’

‘You heard about Johan and Ashlynn?’ he asked.

She nodded again.

‘You didn’t know?’ he asked. ‘Olivia never told you?’

‘She tells me very little.’

‘He was in the ghost town the night of the murder. He may have killed her.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘I know the boy, Chris. I don’t believe he would do something like that.’

‘I can’t look the other way, even though he’s Glenn’s son. There are certain realities of defending a murder charge, Hannah. Evidence pointing to someone else helps Olivia.’

She opened her mouth as if to protest, but she closed it without saying anything. She squared her shoulders, reclaiming her strength. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

‘I need to know more about Ashlynn,’ he said.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Ashlynn called Tanya Swenson from Nebraska the day before she was killed. Do you have any idea why she would do that?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Were they friends?’

‘I have no idea.’

He frowned, wondering if she was hiding things again.

‘Chris, it’s true,’ Hannah went on. ‘You have to understand, I barely knew Ashlynn. She called me two weeks ago. She was in trouble, and I helped her as best I could. That’s the only communication I had with her.’

‘There are too many missing pieces about this girl,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like the abortion.’

‘Christopher, put yourself in her shoes. She was scared and alone.’

‘I realize that, but everyone tells me she was close to her mother. Why didn’t she go to Julia?’

‘Even good girls are afraid to admit their mistakes. Particularly when they face the awful choice that Ashlynn did.’

‘She was a teenager, Hannah.’

‘Do you think she did this lightly? Do you think having a baby was a trifling inconvenience to her?’

‘I don’t know. Tell me.’

‘I saw her, Chris. That girl was in despair. She was inconsolable. The idea of terminating her pregnancy was horrifying to her. It went against every spiritual value she held.’

‘Then why do it? You said you didn’t think she’d been raped.’

‘I don’t believe she was.’

‘Did she tell you who the father was?’

‘I told you, no. I assume now it was Johan, but she didn’t say.’

‘Maybe she was seeing someone else. Johan said she broke up with him a month ago, but her phone records show that she exchanged calls with the clinic shortly before she called you. That was only a couple of weeks ago. If she just found out she was pregnant—’

Hannah held up your hands. ‘Chris, no, you’re wrong.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Ashlynn was already in her second trimester when she came to me. She was slow to realize she was pregnant. She’d been struggling with how to deal with it, but she’d made the decision to tell her parents. She was planning to have the baby. She was going through with it.’

‘So what changed?’ Chris asked.

Hannah hesitated. ‘I don’t know what difference it makes to tell the world what this poor girl was going through.’